Filibuster

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, the new power dynamic in Washington has brought about a frenzy of proposed institutional changes by our friends across the aisle.

The American people elected a Democratic President, that is true; they reduced the Democratic majority in the House; and elected a 50-50 Senate. In all of Congress, there are seven more Democrats than Republicans. That is all--7 out of 535 Members.

Despite these tight margins, our friends on the other side have tried to characterize this new power dynamic as a mandate, and they have floated a tsunami of rule changes to go along with it. First came the push to eliminate the filibuster.

Just a few years ago, the idea of such a radical change terrified our Democratic colleagues. We certainly didn't do it when we were in a position to do it, notwithstanding the encouragement of President Trump.

When Republicans held control of the Senate, the House, and the White House, as our Democratic colleagues do now, our friends on the other side of the aisle feared the filibuster would come tumbling down. They were so concerned, in fact, that 33 of our colleagues signed on to a letter insisting that the filibuster be preserved. Leader McConnell agreed. He never wavered to pressure from anyone, even the President, to eliminate the filibuster. He has been around this Chamber and this Senate a long time, and he knows that what goes around comes around.

As the leader correctly noted, Democrats didn't just spend the last 4 years supporting the filibuster, they took every advantage of the opportunity for the minority to stop legislation they disagreed with. They spent 4 years using it.

Our Democratic colleagues employed the filibuster to kill quite a number of Republican bills on pandemic relief, government funding, pro- life legislation, police reform, and the list goes on and on.

Despite the fact our friends on the other side of the aisle consistently praised and utilized the filibuster in recent years, now, after the election of 2020, they seem to have reversed course. Since the political tides have changed, so, too, have the views of many Senate Democrats.

In recent months, one of our colleagues referred to the filibuster as making a mockery of American democracy.

I happen to remember at John Lewis's funeral--the great civil rights icon--even former President Obama called it a "relic of Jim Crow,'' arguably giving permission to Democrats to call the filibuster a racist obstacle to making progress in the country.

Another Senator said that the filibuster had deep roots in racism, even though last summer Democrats used this tool to block an anti- lynching bill.

The entire debate has ballooned beyond reason, and the past few months have been a game of "will they or won't they'' when it comes to eliminating the filibuster.

You know, the filibuster has very sound origins. It forces us to do what I think the American people would want us to do anyway, and that is to work together. It forces us to do that. And building consensus is hard, as we all know.

Well, we now have confirmation that our Democratic colleagues do not have the votes. Last week, Senator Manchin of West Virginia took to the pages of the Washington Post and said he will not support eliminating or weakening the filibuster. He has been here long enough to know that what you can do in the majority will have consequences when you are in the minority, as you eventually will be if you are here long enough.

I was appreciative of what Senator Manchin said in those pages. I am sure it wasn't easy. I am sure there is a lot of pressure on him to be expedient, to jam things through on a partisan basis, and I appreciate his willingness to stand up.

I agree with the Senator from Arizona, who said: We don't have a rule problem. We have a people problem. We have a behavior problem.

We need to restore bipartisan cooperation. There is no chance that will happen if everything in the Senate is jammed through along party lines.

The filibuster is designed to protect our country from the continual change of who is in the majority and who is in the minority and to provide the American people a chance to plan their lives. If anything that can be done in one election can be undone in the next election, that is an invitation to chaos.

Unfortunately, the list of proposed institutional changes doesn't end with the filibuster. Over the last few years, our friends on the other side of the aisle have also set their sights on the Supreme Court.

We all remember the day a sitting Member of this body threatened two Supreme Court Justices by name. As the Justices were debating a case, the current majority leader said, on the steps of the Supreme Court:

You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price.

Well, I think he realized the error in making that statement because he then followed up with--well, this isn't the point where he realized the error because he doubled down on it. He said:

You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.

Well, we know this wasn't an isolated incident. It is true that the majority leader tried to walk back his words later after he realized how intemperate and inappropriate they were when directed at two sitting members of the U.S. Supreme Court.

We don't have to remember too far in the past to know how the words we speak here in Congress and as public officials--the impact they can have on other people's minds and perceptions, especially those who are not particularly stable in the first place.

Well, several of our Democratic colleagues filed an amicus brief in which they threatened the Supreme Court with retribution unless they got the outcome that they wanted.

Thank goodness our Founders designed the Federal Government with three separate but equal branches. Through this system of checks and balances, they sought to prevent any one branch of government from forcing its will on the other two. Standing up on the steps of the Supreme Court and issuing threats to the Justices that they must do what you want or else is certainly not consistent with the Founders' vision.

Let me be clear. An independent judiciary is the crown jewel of our Constitution and our constitutional Republic--an independent judiciary. In the words of Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, "We should celebrate our strong and independent judiciary as a source of national unity and stability.'' But now, even this hallowed institution is being attacked by our Democratic colleagues unless they get the result they want. They are trying to intimidate the members of the Supreme Court.

Then there is the most recent discussion--threat, really--about packing the Supreme Court with additional members. The push to pack the Supreme Court has been a mainstay of the far left for years, but it has now made its way into the Biden administration.

Previously, throughout his campaign, President Biden refused to weigh in on this topic. He knew how explosive this was, this threat to pack the Court, to make it a political body, to eliminate its role as an independent judiciary. Well, he refused to weigh in on it during the campaign, and I have no doubt this was an important strategic decision. He realized how offensive that would be to the voters he hoped would vote for him in 2020. A poll last fall found that less than one-third of Americans support increasing the number of Justices on the Supreme Court.

The President previously said he is "not a fan of court packing.'' In fact, he called it a "bonehead idea.'' He referred to President Roosevelt's proposal to pack the Court as a "terrible, terrible mistake.'' But now President Biden has appeared to have embraced this "bonehead idea'' and this "terrible, terrible mistake'' that he condemned previously.

The first step was last week when he created a Commission to examine adding members to the Supreme Court of the United States above the current nine. This decision and announcement came despite the fact that Justices on both sides appointed by Presidents on both sides of the aisle have affirmed the integrity of the Supreme Court with just nine members.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was an icon for the liberals on the Court and many people in America, said: "Nine seems to be a good number.''

Just last week, Justice Breyer said that the Court's authority depends on "a trust that the court is guided by legal principle, not politics.'' He said that these types of changes would erode the trust that the American people must have in the highest Court in the land.

The American people simply won't have faith in an independent judiciary if one side is adding names to the roster so that they can game the outcome. They need to get involved in the legislative process if they want to make policy, not try to make politics through the judiciary, through the Supreme Court.

So I would urge President Biden to heed his own words that he delivered with such conviction during his time on the Judiciary Committee when he said that President Roosevelt's decision "put in question for an entire decade the independence of the most significant body . . . in this country.''

Well, unfortunately, the power grab doesn't stop there. The single biggest legislative goal of our friends on the other side of the aisle is an attempted takeover of State election laws. That is in spite of the fact that article I of the Constitution explicitly gives the States the power to regulate the "times, places, and manner of holding elections.'' Yet this massive bill creates a one-size-fits-all mandate that every State must follow. It preempts State law, but I doubt it would ultimately be held up as constitutional because of the explicit guarantee that the States will regulate the time, manner, and place of holding elections.

But there are also other changes that our Democratic colleagues-- where they seek to reap the benefit of a politicized Supreme Court and Federal Agencies.

In this instance, the Federal Election Commission has six members, three from each party--intentionally designed to be a tie vote if they vote along party lines, to protect the Commission from partisan politics.

We have learned that a fair and balanced Commission, which has been the standard for many years, isn't the gold standard for Democrats when they are in control of Congress and the White House. The election takeover bill introduced by our Democratic colleagues would remove one of the seats held by a Republican member of the Commission and turn the FEC into a partisan body. No more equal representation. No more consensus building. Why bother with that if you can steamroll an agenda with no opposition?

Then there is the taxpayer funding of political campaigns. Instead of candidates working to gain the support, the vote, the activism and contributions from their preferred candidate, our Democratic colleagues want the taxpayer to pay for those campaigns. And it is not even a dollar-for-dollar match. The American taxpayer would pay $6 dollars for every $1 dollar that was donated to a candidate. That means if someone donates 200 bucks to their preferred candidate, the Federal Government would match that with up to $1,200. Those are taxpayer dollars. That is money coming out of your pocket whether you support that candidate's policies or not.

On top of that, there are campaign vouchers proposed which would provide eligible voters with a $25 voucher to donate to the campaign of their choosing. I would rather this funding support the people and organizations that really need it: crime victims, unaccompanied children on our border, domestic violence, shelters. There are far more urgent needs for this money than our Democratic colleagues' campaign account.

Of course, this effort comes at a time when the House Democrats are already trying to overturn the results of an Iowa congressional election in order to boost their own numbers.

This confluence of institutional changes isn't about repairing a broken system; it is revolutionary. It is a revolution. You can't win every case before the Supreme Court? Well, just add some more liberal Justices. You can't build support for legislation? Well, eliminate the filibuster and the need to build consensus and to work together on a bipartisan basis. You can't win an election? Overturn the results and secure government funding or taxpayer funding for your candidates. And to cement these changes for a generation, better throw in a complete partisan takeover of our election laws.

Our Democratic friends are taking the saying "If you can't win the game, change the rules'' to a whole new level. This has been branded by propaganda, really, as a way to fix the system. Well, the system is not broken, and to the extent it needs reforms, it can be reformed at the State level, where the Constitution provides the authority for the States to run their elections.

Well, I think it is important for the American people to understand exactly what is going on here. You can't understand what is going on here by just reading social media or watching cable news shows that reinforce your own bias. Unfortunately, our news these days seems to be like ships passing in the night, and people pick the channel that reaffirms their previous bias and doesn't challenge people with ideas that perhaps they are not familiar with or don't agree with, which is the way we ought to be dealing with each other. It is OK to disagree, but we ought to engage each other in a civil and respectful manner and to work those out in the crucible of our democracy known as the Congress.

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