McConnell warns GOP 'it’s over' for Republicans if Harris wins and kills Senate filibuster

26 September 2024

Outgoing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) isn't optimistic about how Republicans will fare if Vice President Kamala Harris wins the November election and Democrats keep control of the Senate.

According to Semafor, McConnell is particularly worried about Harris' stated goal of abolishing the filibuster. The vice president called for an end to the procedure in order to pass legislation restoring abortion rights taken away after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. The Kentucky Republican told the outlet that the finality of ending the filibuster would mean there's little Republicans could do to stop Democrats' agenda.

"What I concluded is, whenever they think it’s getting in the way of something they really want to do, they’re going to break the rules,” McConnell said. “And once you do it once, it’s over.”

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Montana), who is one of the red state incumbents Democrats are spending large sums to reelect this year, said he wanted to reform the filibuster instead of eliminate it outright. And Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) would only say the next session of Congress — which gavels in on January 3, 2025 — would discuss the possibility. However, McConnell insisted it's safe to assume that Democrats are largely supportive of Harris' position, given that she's now openly running on it.

“They’re all committed to it now, because Chuck has made them take a public position. Every Democratic challenger, I’m told, running for the Senate is taking the same position,” McConnell said. “I think they fully intend to do it if they can.”

Currently, the filibuster allows for the minority party in the U.S. Senate to effectively kill any bill that can't garner 60 votes from the 100-member body. Any member under current rules can invoke "cloture," which requires a bill to meet the 60-vote threshold before it can get a full up-or-down vote in the body. As Senate.gov records show, McConnell is the far-and-away leader on invoking the procedure, with the number of cloture motions roughly doubling after he became the Republican leader in 2007.

Democrats, who control the Senate with a slim 51-49 majority, could kill the filibuster on a party-line vote by invoking what's referred to as the "nuclear option." That involves any member raising a point of process to override a standing rule. The filibuster is never mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, so senators could eliminate it at any time. However, in the most recent session of Congress, Sens. Joe Manchin (I-West Virginia) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Arizona) made it clear they would oppose efforts to kill the filibuster.

This isn't the first time McConnell has sounded the alarm about what a Harris administration would do. He said previously that if Harris were to win and Democrats eliminated the Senate filibuster, they could feasibly grant statehood to both Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico, which he warned would give Democrats an additional four U.S. senators "in perpetuity."

Additionally, numerous other bills Democrats have been itching to pass could become law with a simple majority. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) unveiled legislation on Thursday that would add six new seats to the Supreme Court, create two new judicial circuits, make it more difficult for the Court to strike down laws passed by Congress and implement a binding code of ethics on current Supreme Court justices.

Click here to read Semafor's report in full.

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