Senate Republicans quickly rejected President Trump’s push that they go “nuclear” and change Senate rules to eliminate the legislative filibuster in order to pass a funding bill with $5 billion for his wall on the Mexican border.
“I’ve long said that eliminating the legislative filibuster would be a mistake,” said outgoing Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) in a string of tweets explaining his position.
“It’s what’s prevented our country for decades from sliding toward liberalism. It’s inconvenient sometimes, but requiring compromise is in the interest of both parties in the long term,” Hatch said.
{mosads}Retiring GOP Sen. Jeff Flake (Ariz.) pledged that he wouldn’t vote to nix the 60-vote filibuster in order to clear money for the border.
“The Senate filibuster is about the only mechanism left in Washington that brings the parties together. Deploying the nuclear option would blow that up. I will not vote to do it,” Flake said.
Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who also is retiring early next month,
said he would “continue to follow rules relative to legislation as they exist today as I finish my term.”
And Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, added that he would also not vote to use the nuclear option.
“We have rules to follow. I want to put a stop to this practice of the Senate breaking its rules to change its rules. I will not vote to turn the Senate into a rule-breaking institution and I hope that my colleagues will not,” said Alexander, who announced this week that he would retire at the end of the next Congress.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has repeatedly rejected Trump’s request to nix the legislative filibuster, saying there aren’t the votes in the Senate to do so.
“With the regard to the filibuster rule, as I’ve told him repeatedly, the votes aren’t there to change it. They just aren’t there,” McConnell
said at an event earlier this year, adding, “I simply disagree with the president about the harm that [the filibuster] does.”
A spokesman for McConnell said that remains the leader’s position.
“The Leader has said for years that the votes are not there in the Conference to use the nuclear option. Just this morning, several Senators put out statements confirming their opposition, and confirming that there is not a majority in the conference to go down that road,” David Popp, a spokesman for McConnell, said in a statement.
Trump, reversing course to blame Democrats for a partial shutdown, publicly urged McConnell to use the nuclear in a tweet, adding that “our Country is counting on you!”
The demand comes as Congress has roughly 13 hours to prevent a partial government shutdown expected to begin Saturday.
Both sides remain far apart on funding for the border with no clear path on how to prevent a lapse in funding that would impact roughly 25 percent of the government. Republicans, including McConnell, went to the White House on Friday morning to talk with Trump.
The Senate passed a seven-week stopgap bill on Wednesday but Trump has said he will not sign the bill. House Republicans added $5.7 billion for the border as well as disaster recovery money to the legislation and kicked the shutdown fight back to the Senate.
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