Al Franken: Mitch McConnell ‘Has Pretty Much Ruined the Senate’
"Filibusters should be rare,” Minnesota Democrat says
As Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell pursues a scorched-earth strategy by blocking Democratic efforts either to fund the federal government, or raise the debt ceiling to enable the government to continue paying it's obligations, the Kentucky Republican also is destroying the fabric of the Senate as an institution, according to a well-known former Democratic senator.
Led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky), Republicans joined to block all Democratic attempts to pass measures aimed at keeping the federal government funded and open beyond Thursday as well as to raise the federal debt ceiling.
Republicans are doing so in anger over the Democrats' $3.5 trillion Build Back Better Act, which would fund much of Biden and the Democrats' domestic agenda — including the largest-ever federal investment in the fight against global climate change. That bill was to move through the Senate under a process known as “reconciliation,” which is immune to Republican filibustering.
Unless Democrats find some new way to prevail, the federal government will shut down at 12:59 pm Thursday in the midst of both a global pandemic and a struggling economy. Moreover, without action on the debt ceiling, the government for the first time will default, creating unprecedented economic instability.
“I think he has pretty much ruined the Senate. Let me explain. During the Obama years, they filibustered more executive nominees than had been — or the same amount that had been filibustered during the entire previous history of the country,” said former senator Al Franken, of Minnesota. “It used to be rare that you had a filibuster. It was really rare.
“Now once someone objects, you have a filibuster. This is not what the filibuster — this is why when I talk to Joe Manchin about what [congressional scholar] Norm Ornstein and I want to do, why he is open to it. Because filibusters should be rare,” added Franken, referring to their work on filibuster reform. “And filibusters should be about debating an important topic that is important to the American people and important enough to a party to filibuster. It is not just one person objecting, and now we have a filibuster.”
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