He told George Stephanopoulos he wanted to go back to the ‘talking filibuster’.
President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that he is in favor of changing the Senate’s filibuster rule so that senators must talk on the ground to withhold a bill, the first time he approved the reform of the procedure that the White House has maintained for weeks that the president is against abolition.
The comments, made in an exclusive interview with ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos, could spur reformists who claim the legislative filibuster is hampering Biden’s agenda in the closely-divided Senate.
“Don’t you have to choose between keeping the filibuster and promoting your agenda?” Stephanopoulos asked Biden in their interview outside of Philadelphia.
“Yes, but here’s the choice: I don’t think you should eliminate the filibuster, you should do it like it was when I first went to the Senate,” Biden said. “You had to get up and do the talking, you had to keep talking.”
So you’re in favor of that reform? You’re in favor of bringing back the talking filibuster? ‘ Stephanopulos asked.
‘It’s me. That was what it should have been, ”Biden said.
“It gets to the point where, you know, democracy has a hard time functioning,” Biden told Stephanopoulos.
As late as Tuesday, White House press secretary Jan Psaki insisted that Biden preferred “not to make changes” to the filibuster, but was “open to” ideas on the subject.
Currently, 60 votes are needed in the Senate to end the debate and pass legislation, a threshold that requires Democrats to have the backing of at least 10 Republicans to advance bills through the 50-50 Senate.
Many Democrats, fearing that the filibuster could hold back important agenda items such as the right to vote and immigration reform, have pressured Democrats to use their majority to eliminate the filibuster or change the rules. A proposal Biden refers to on Tuesday would revert to the “ talking filibuster ” used decades ago that required senators to speak on the Senate floor to support a challenge to the legislation.
While moderate Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin, DW.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., Have objected to changing the filibuster, Manchin recently raised the possibility of making the tactic ‘more painful’ for Republicans – a comment that was seized by the advocates of reform.
Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., On Tuesday warned Democrats against changing the legislative filibuster.
“This chaos would not open an explicit path for liberal change. It would not open an explicit path for the Biden Presidency to rush into the history books,” he said. The Senate would be more like a pile of a hundred cars. Nothing moves. ‘
McConnell said Republicans would benefit from any rule change the next time they maintain a majority in the Senate.
“This pendulum would swing in both directions – hard,” he said.
Watch more of the interview with President Joe Biden on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Wednesday, March 17 at 7:00 am EDT.