Donald Trump sent an unmistakable challenge to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Friday, calling the Senate’s filibuster rule a ‘death sentence’ for GOP’s legislative goals.
‘It’s a disaster, OK? It’s a disaster for the Republicans,” the president said in an interview with former Arkansas governor and two-time presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.
Huckabee conducted the discussion with Trump on his program that appears on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, a Christian evangelical cable channel.
‘They have to get rid of it,’ Trump said of the filibuster rule. ‘If they don’t get rid of it, it’s just a death sentence.’
President Donald Trump says the U.S. Senate should scrap a rule requiring 60 senators to agree before a debate can be ended and a vote called on any legislation
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is content to let Democrats stymie most bills by voting in lockstep, fearing that scrapping the ‘filibuster’ rule would come back to haunt him if Republicans become the minority party in the future
Senate rules call for a majority vote to pass a bill, but a super-majority of 60 out of 100 senators must first agree to end a debate and move to a vote in the first place.
Any senator can bring the proceedings to a halt by mounting a ‘filibuster,’ which traditionally has meant occupying the Senate floor nonstop in order to helt the proceedings.
In recent years, however, the mere announcement of an intent to filibuster has been enough to put some bills on the back-burner.
‘The problem we have is we have 52 senators. And they have to get rid of the just absolutely crazy voting where you need 60,’ trump said Friday.
‘It’s called the filibuster rule, and it’s a disaster.’
Mike Huckabee (right) has a Trinity Broadcasting Network show but was among the Republicans who challenged Trump in the 2016 GOP presidential primary race
Trump has been friendly with Huckabee, even appointing his daughter Sarah Huckabee Sanders to be his White House press secretary
Trump has called on the Senate numeroud times to scrap the archaic rule, a step that’s within McConnell’s power to take.
But he and other moderate Republicans have warned that it would be a dangerous precedent to set, since Democrats will inevitably win back control of the upper chamber of Congress some day – and would be free to operate under the same revised rules.
Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat who has since retired, banned the filibuster for most presidential nominations in 2013, a move calculated to help Barack Obama with tough confirmation fights.
Viewed at the time as ‘the nuclear option,’ it cleared logjams and put the GOP at a disadvantage.
Republicans turned the tables this year, however, waiving the filibuster for President Trump’s nomination of Neil Gorsuch to serve on the Supreme Court and approving him with 54 ‘yea’ votes, largely along party lines.
Huckabee ran against Trump in the 2016 GOP presidential primary, and mounted his first White House bid in 2008.
His daughter, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, is Trump’s press secretary at the White House.