The decision is tied up in the roiling debate over the Senate filibuster — the long-standing rule that requires 60 votes to end debate on most bills, giving a unified minority de facto veto power over the majority’s agenda.
The chamber is expected to spend the remainder of March filling out Biden’s Cabinet, returning next month after an Easter recess to take up new legislative business.
Schumer said Wednesday that he has not yet decided on the Senate’s next legislative move but is committed to passing a “big, bold agenda” — and not waiting for Republicans to come along.
“We want to work with Republicans — any Republicans we can — and we hope they’ll work with us,” he said. “But job number one: Get that bold agenda done.”
Although Republicans have yet to filibuster a Democratic bill in the new 50-50 Senate — the pandemic bill was passed using special budget procedures that can skirt the supermajority threshold — a large and growing number of Democrats are itching for a fight.
That group includes Schumer, who committed Thursday to bringing legislation to expand background checks for gun buyers to the Senate floor for the first time since 2013, when a similar measure garnered 54 votes.
They have the backing of key interest groups — such as the AFL-CIO, which on Thursday urged “swift and necessary changes” to Senate rules if Republicans block pro-worker initiatives “so that the will of the people of the United States expressed in the 2020 elections can be turned into the progress our country and our people desperately need.”
But some Democrats, notably Sens. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), say they will not be a party to the elimination of the filibuster — at least for the time being — and they are publicly encouraging Schumer and other Democrats to engage in negotiations with Republicans on key issues, such as raising the minimum wage and funding national infrastructure.
“Everybody I’ve spoken to wants the minimum wage to rise,” Manchin said Wednesday. “We all want it to rise.”
The hitch is, any negotiations on the minimum wage, infrastructure or other issues are certain to produce an outcome far short of what most Democrats are hoping to achieve.
Where liberal advocates and party leaders want a $15 an hour federal minimum wage, Manchin is pushing $11 an hour. Some Democrats are talking about funding $4 trillion in infrastructure — to include climate-related projects and other wide-ranging provisions — while Republicans want a smaller bill focused on traditional transportation projects.
In a nod to the calls for bipartisanship, Schumer is preparing a legislative package aimed at combating China’s growing economic power — seizing on an issue that has broad support in both parties. Senate aides said it could be ready for floor action next month, and Schumer included it Wednesday in a litany of possible legislative items he recited to reporters.
The filibuster fight looms regardless, and advocates of ditching or at least modifying the rule got a boost when Manchin appeared to indicate openness to changes in an NBC “Meet the Press” interview Sunday. Manchin, however, stood by the supermajority threshold in a subsequent interview.
Advocates of changing the rules are gearing up for a lengthy internal effort to build Democratic unity behind changing the rules — mindful that past modifications to the filibuster happened only after pressure built over the course of months or years for action.
In 2013, it took nearly a year for then-Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) to win the necessary votes to kill the 60-vote threshold for executive nominees and most federal judges — a process that involved bringing up several high-profile nominees for failed votes.
Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) told reporters this week that Democrats were looking to create “some floor experience” to prove the sort of filibuster-enabled GOP intransigence that blocked multiple Democratic initiatives during President Barack Obama’s administration.
“Bring some bills to the floor — let’s see what happens,” said Durbin, who said he is “open to whatever process makes the Senate productive again.”
Republicans are all but certain to stand in the way of several of the key Democratic bills that have emerged from the House this year — at least not without major changes. They include the Equality Act, which prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity; the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which is meant to combat police violence and racial disparities in law enforcement; and the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which would make it easier for workers to form unions.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Wednesday strongly defended the filibuster in comments to reporters, calling it “the essence of the Senate” and raising the prospect that an all-Republican government could easily move to pass laws Democrats would abhor — such as a bill limiting unions’ ability to force its members to pay dues.
“Majorities come and majorities go,” he said. “The status quo on this issue is exactly where we ought to be.”
McConnell has been especially outspoken about opposing the For the People Act, a Democratic wish list of changes to campaign and elections law that would set minimum standards for ballot access and mandate nonpartisan redistricting commissions, among dozens of other changes.
Some Democrats see voting legislation as exactly the type of popular legislation that could ultimately break the back of the filibuster. Several senators acknowledged informal conversations inside the Democratic ranks about how best to make the case to the public that minority blockades are preventing action on key issues — probably by bringing up key bills for party-line votes blocking their progress.
“You obviously want them to be broadly popular,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), who is among a clutch of younger senators eager to get the chamber on a more productive footing.
But Schatz said the push to change the rules “needs a little more time in the oven” to help move public opinion on the heels of a major Democratic legislative triumph: “It’s hard to understand how an ancient procedural rule is hurting us if it actually hasn’t hurt us quite yet.”
The targets of the campaign to highlight the Senate obstacles aren’t persuadable Republican senators or frustrated Democratic voters but rather Manchin, Sinema and a quieter group of Democratic senators who have reservations about further eroding the filibuster.
While Manchin has openly pondered changes to the rule, Sinema recently told constituents in a letter that she supported preserving it as a means to “protect what the Senate was designed to be” — a place of debate and compromise. Several other Democratic senators signed a bipartisan letter in support of the filibuster in 2017, when Republicans had control of Congress and the presidency. Although several Democrats have withdrawn their support for that letter, several others have not.
“The theory that some of my colleagues have is that the filibuster promotes cooperation, and I don’t think that they’re right, but I’m willing to test their theory,” said Sen. Christopher Murphy (D-Conn.), who wants a rapid legislative push to force the GOP’s hand. “Perhaps the threat of the rules changing will convince Republicans to support us, or we’ll end up with more evidence as to why the existing rules actually encourage obstruction.”
Standing with Murphy, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other backers of gun-control legislation on Thursday before the background checks bill passed the House, Schumer said he was ready to act and bring the fight directly to the Senate floor.
“We will see where people stand,” he said. “Maybe we’ll get the votes. And if we don’t, we’ll come together as a caucus and figure out how we’re going to get this done.”
