In an interview with Wisconsin Public Radio on Sept. 24, incumbent Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris stated that she supported ending the Senate filibuster in order to pass legislation which would protect abortion rights federally. This was part of an effort to restore Roe v. Wade as federal law, which has become a hot issue in the 2024 presidential election.
“I’ve been very clear, I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe,” Harris told WPR. “And get us to the point where 51 votes would be what we need to actually put back in law the protections for reproductive freedom.”
This isn’t anything new. In the past, Harris has supported similar efforts to get rid of the filibuster.
At the 2022 Democratic National Convention Summer Meeting, Harris voiced her support for ending the filibuster to protect voting and reproductive rights. She also supported ending the filibuster to pass Green New Deal legislation in 2019, when she was a senator running for president.
Passing a bill through the Senate requires a simple majority vote, or 51 votes. However, it is possible for senators to filibuster, a tactic used to delay voting on a bill, thus making it harder for it to pass and protecting the minority. A filibuster can be ended by a vote of cloture, which requires a supermajority, or 60 senators. The filibuster slows down the legislative process, making passing legislation more deliberate while potentially preventing bills from being passed too hastily. Removing the filibuster would make it much easier to pass legislation in the Senate, which Harris and many other Democrats favor in order to pass abortion legislation.
Currently, the Democratic party is the Senate majority party, holding 47 seats. By forming a caucus, the party could gain enough votes to pass a bill via simple majority. The only thing that stands in the way of this is the filibuster.
While removing the filibuster would make it easier to pass legislation to protect abortion rights, such an action could have lasting consequences in areas beyond abortion.
Eliminating the filibuster would require use of the nuclear option, which allows the override of Senate rules by a simple majority. However, use of the nuclear option sets a precedent that would allow use in the future. Although getting rid of the filibuster would make it easier for abortion legislation to pass, it would also remove the barrier for any future legislation, leading to greater shifts in policy depending on which party has more power. This would mean that although the barrier of the filibuster would be removed in order to pass Democratic legislation, the same barrier would also not be there to prevent future Republican legislation from passing as well.
Historically, successful efforts to limit the Senate filibuster have had similar results.
In 2013, Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid invoked the nuclear option to remove the filibuster on executive and judicial appointments outside of the Supreme Court, reducing the vote of cloture to a simple majority. This sped up the confirmation process for President Barack Obama’s nomination of three D.C. Circuit judges. However, in 2017, Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell extended Reid’s precedent to include Supreme Court judges. This allowed President Donald Trump’s nominations of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to be confirmed with simple majority votes. Thus, use of the nuclear option, while seeming beneficial at the moment, could potentially turn against the invoker once the opposition party takes power.
While the Democratic party is currently holding to a slim majority of seats, it may not be long before the Republican party regains the majority. If the filibuster were eliminated, allowing the passage of a bill restoring Roe v. Wade, a future Republican-dominated Senate would be able to pass legislation more easily as well, and potentially even repeal the bill.
It could also be argued that the removal of the Senate filibuster entirely would furthermore go against the founding fathers’ intent of the Senate being the slower, more deliberate house, compared to the relatively radical House of Representatives.
Overall, the elimination of the filibuster would increase the instability of the legislature. By empowering the power in the Senate majority, it would allow for speedier and potentially hastier passage of legislation, at the cost of diminishing the power of the minority.
Harris’s call to end the filibuster reflects the frustration of many Americans, both left and right, of the legislative gridlock caused by partisanism. While removing the filibuster may help speed up the legislative process, is it worth the price of greater instability?
