On Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell warned Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats that eliminating the filibuster to ram through progressive legislation would “permanently damage the institution” and harm Democrats in the long term.
“The Senate Democratic Leader is trying to bully his own members into breaking their word, breaking the Senate, and silencing the voices of millions of citizens,” McConnell said. “So that one political party can take over our nation’s elections from the top down.”
“In January 2021, a mob tried to intimidate and change the Senate and they failed. In January 2021, the Senate stayed true to itself and stood strong,” McConnell said, referring to the Capitol riot. “But in January 2022, some of the Senate’s own members want to permanently damage the institution from within. They want to shatter its central feature.”
“By breaking the Senate, this Democratic Leader wants to silence the voices of millions and millions of Americans. He wants to throw whole regions of the country into a political power outage because those voters don’t agree with his radicalism,” McConnell said. “We’ll see which Senators have the courage and the principle to put a stop to it.”
“I want to make something very clear,” McConnell said. “Fifty Republican Senators, the largest possible minority, have been sent here to represent the many millions of Americans whom Leader Schumer wants so badly to leave behind.”
“If my colleague tries to break the Senate to silence those millions of Americans, we will make their voices heard in this chamber in ways that are more inconvenient for the majority and this White House than what anybody has seen in living memory,” McConnell warned.
“What would a post-nuclear Senate look like?” McConnell asked rhetorically. “I assure you it would not be more efficient or more productive. I personally guarantee it. Do my colleagues understand how many times per day the Senate needs and get unanimous consent for basic housekeeping? Do they understand how many things would require roll-call votes, how often the minority could demand lengthy debate? Our colleagues who are itching for a procedural nuclear winter have not even begun to contemplate how it would look. Our colleagues who are itching to drain every drop of collegiality from this body have not even begun to consider how that would work.”
“If the Democratic leader tries to shut millions of Americans and entire states out of the business of governing, the operations of this body will change. Oh yes, that much is true. But not in a way that rewards the rule-breakers. Not in ways that advantage this president, this majority, or their party. I guarantee it,” McConnell concluded.
