Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has adamantly defended the Senate filibuster in the past despite altering his stance since President Biden took office, once describing it as “part of the hallowed process around here of the Founding Fathers saying the Senate is the cooling saucer.”
The far-left has been pushing to end the filibuster, which requires 60 votes to pass most pieces of significant legislation in the 50-50 Senate, although there are certain workarounds using the reconciliation process. Nonetheless, radical Democrats believe they need to nuke the filibuster in order to advance their top agenda items, from their pursuit of a Green New Deal to a $15 minimum wage. Schumer has since warned that all options “will be on the table” if Republicans obstruct.
“But if they [Republicans] vote no on everything in terms of the kinds of change that America needs, then our caucus will have to get together and figure out how to get it done,” Schumer said during a March appearance on MSNBC’s The Sunday Show.
“Everything will be on the table. Failure is not an option,” he warned. “We cannot turn away from the big, bold change that is needed.”
However, Schumer took a demonstratively different stance in the past. During a November 6, 2003 floor speech, Schumer spoke highly of the filibuster rule, describing the Senate as a “cooling saucer,” emphasis added:
I don’t agree with many of the judges we are nominating on particular issues, but they meet the fundamental test. The only litmus test I have is not on any one issue but, rather, will the judge interpret the law, not make it. That is what the Founding Fathers wanted judges to do in their infinite wisdom. I say “infinite” because my hair stands on edge; the longer I am around, the more I respect the wisdom of our Founding Fathers. In their infinite wisdom, they wanted judges to interpret law, not make it; they wanted the Senate, in its infinite wisdom, to be a check – a real check, not a rubberstamp – on the President’s power to nominate. The Senate is a cooling saucer.
The other side says, let the majority rule. We know what will happen. Every single one of the President’s nominees, so many chosen through ideological prisms, will be approved. I don’t think we have had a situation, since the President has nominated anyone – I may be wrong – where a single Republican opposed any of the President’s nominees. Is that the open, grand debate the Founding Fathers envisioned? I may be off by an instance here and an instance there, but I am sure if you tabulate all the votes taken by Republicans on all of the nominees, the number of “no” votes, the percentage of “no” votes, is infinitesimal.
Yes, we are blocking judges by filibuster. That is part of the hallowed process around here of the Founding Fathers saying the Senate is the cooling saucer. We do not work as quickly as the House. We are not as restricted as the House. That is how it was intended to be.
Schumer also argued in favor of preserving the filibuster in more recent years.
“In a post-nuclear world, if the Senate and the presidency are in the hands of the same party, there’s no incentive to even speak to the Senate minority,” he said in an April 6, 2017 floor speech, calling it a “recipe for more conflict and bad blood between the parties, not less.”
“The cooling saucer of the Senate will get considerably hotter,” he added.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has since said the New York Democrat is “yielding to the pressure of the hard left to turn the Senate into a speedway as opposed to a place where things are paused and thought over.”
A plurality of voters disagree with Democrat attempts to ditch the filibuster, a Rasmussen Reports survey released Tuesday found.
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