Here we go again. Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) is back to his old tricks in an article from the National Review titled “Sasse’s Warning: Scrapping the Filibuster Will Make American Politics More Extreme.”
It was a moment of optimism for me back in January 2021, after the Capitol insurrection, when Sasse wrote in the Atlantic: “If the GOP is to have a future… we have to call out falsehoods and conspiracy theories unequivocally. We have to repudiate people who peddle those lies.”
When Sasse voted “Country over Party” in Trump’s second impeachment, there was another glimmer of hope. He voted to convict. An act of courage and decency.
But now Ben Sasse is back to his old ways. For reasons unexplained, he voted against Merrick Garland’s confirmation as Attorney General in the Judiciary session and on the Senate floor. And on Tuesday, March 25, Sasse gave a 27 minute speech on the Senate floor about the filibuster. No surprise, Sasse advocates keeping the filibuster in its current form.
Sasse believes that getting rid of the filibuster would make politics more extreme. Honestly, how is that even possible? And really, isn’t that just a dodge? Sasse and his colleagues were sent to Washington DC tasked with the job of governance. In the case of Congress, that means writing, debating, voting on and passing legislation in service of the American people.
Sasse claims that the filibuster is a tool for consensus building. Yet in arguing for it, he name checks Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Senator Tim Scott (R-SC), rather than explaining all the times he’s seen the filibuster effectively foster consensus. How does that work?
If Sasse supported the For The People Act, and canvassed his fellow GOP senators to do the same, it might be worth entertaining his support for the effectiveness of the filibuster. Instead, he followed up his speech Tuesday by spending more than an hour play-acting a 2005 speech by President Biden into the Senate record on Thursday. (Um. Didn’t Sasse declare Senator Josh Hawley “really dumbass” for a political stunt back in January??) One can only assume Sasse does not support publicly popular legislation intended to expand voting rights, reduce the influence of money in politics, and limit partisan gerrymandering, and is instead more interested in protecting the filibuster.
Elected Republican Senators are a minority more concerned about maintaining their power than voting for legislation that is popular with a majority of Americans. Sasse knows it. In his speech Tuesday, he argued: “Pass laws today with 50-plus-one majority and watch them be repealed tomorrow with 50-plus-one majority. Our nation then would just pinball from one policy agenda to another,” claiming that the repeal of the filibuster would make “politics too central in the life of the American people” by allowing “fickle 51–49 majorities to change the whole direction of the nation.”
It’s bogus. Political battles have returned to being central in Washington, and have impact on the lives of everyday Americans who want action, not standstill, from elected officials in DC. The American people don’t want ping-ponging, but they want to see their interests protected and good legislation passed.
Here’s the noteworthy flaw in Sasse’s logic: According to Vox, the Democratic Senators in Congress represent more than 41 million more Americans than the Republican Senators. A 50–50 split in the Senate does not correlate with what the majority of American’s support from a policy standpoint. Still, if the 50 Republican senators choose to filibuster legislation, they prevent anything from getting done. (And while the filibuster has been problematic, it is worth noting that filibustering reached new heights of obstruction under the Republicans with Mitch McConnell, not under the Democrats.)
Sasse’s guiding document is always the Constitution. In the Atlantic article, he writes that Republicans “can dedicate ourselves to defending the Constitution and perpetuating our best American institutions and traditions.” Sasse would do well to remember that the filibuster is not part of the Constitution. It is true that the Constitution grants power to the majority with protections for the rights of the minority. Still, when Ben Sasse argues for the filibuster, it feels safe to assume that the interests of the Republican Senate minority he advocates for were not the minority rights the Founders intended to protect.
