It’s against Senate rules to allow future job negotiations of a retiring senator to conflict with bills that the senator might vote upon before s/he actually leaves office. Nevertheless, Joe Manchin had a recent conference call with donors who support conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans, and he pretty much inferred that helping Roy Blunt might persuade Blunt to vote for the January 6 Commission and that would get the heat off the filibuster debate, which would affect the donors’ bottom lines. The Intercept obtained leaked audio of this meeting:
Manchin told the assembled donors that he needed help flipping a handful of Republicans from no to yes on the January 6 commission in order to strip the “far left” of their best argument against the filibuster. The filibuster is a critical priority for the donors on the call, as it bottles up progressive legislation that would hit their bottom lines.
When it came to Sen. Roy Blunt, a moderate Missouri Republican who voted no on the commission, Manchin offered a creative solution. “Roy Blunt is a great, just a good friend of mine, a great guy,” Manchin said. “Roy is retiring. If some of you all who might be working with Roy in his next life could tell him, that’d be nice and it’d help our country. That would be very good to get him to change his vote. And we’re going to have another vote on this thing. That’ll give me one more shot at it.”
Regarding Blunt, Manchin appears to be suggesting — without, perhaps, quite explicitly saying so — that the wealthy executives on the call could dangle future financial opportunities in front of the outgoing senator while lobbying him to change his vote. Senate ethics rules forbid future job negotiations if they create a conflict of interest or present even the appearance of a conflict of interest. Manchin, notably, doesn’t suggest that the donors discuss a job, but rather says that people who Blunt may later be working with would be likely to have significant influence, reflective of the way future job prospects can shape the legislative process even when unspoken.
The commission, Manchin tells No Labels, is important in its own right, necessary to determine how security failed and what former President Donald Trump’s role was in the riot, if any. But it’s also critical to maintaining support for the filibuster. The January 6 commission got 56 votes, four short of the 60 needed to overcome a filibuster — a thorough embarrassment for those like Manchin who claim bipartisanship is still possible in the divided Senate chamber.
Manchin told the donors he hoped to make another run at it to prove that comity is not lost. He noted that Sen. Pat Toomey, a Pennsylvania Republican who missed the vote, would have voted for it had he been there, meaning only three more votes are needed. “What I’m asking for, I need to go back, I need to find three more Republican, good Republican senators that will vote for the commission. So at least we can tamp down where people say, ‘Well, Republicans won’t even do the simple lift, common sense of basically voting to do a commission that was truly bipartisan.’ It just really emboldens the far left saying, ‘I told you, how’s that bipartisan working for you now, Joe?’”
This group of donors, No Labels, makes a lot of donations to a lot of candidates. They’re very influential. It makes sense that Manchin would attempt a trade like this, get me the January 6 Commission and I’ll keep the filibuster rolling.
Harry Reid said earlier this year that the filibuster was done, that it was only a matter of time. And even Manchin has discussed reducing the number for cloture, as was last done in the 1970’s, when it was lowered from 67 to 60. There has been discussion on lowering the number to 55.
Manchin says he opposes getting rid of the filibuster altogether. Although the fact is, it doesn’t look like bipartisanship is working out all that well for him right now, and that comity in this day and age is but a dream. Maybe it’s time for Manchin to wake up and smell the coffee.
And still no one has seriously addressed the question of whether Dems really want to bequeath a filibuster-free Senate for the GOP to use the next time they are the majority. All the Manchin ad hominem in the world merely evades the question.
Yeah. That has been the case for well over a decade. While both sides talk about ending the filibuster for good, neither side has been willing to actually do it. McConnell is always ready to scrap the filibuster when the GOP’s in charge but he’s well aware that the public can be incredibly fickle and turn a GOP majority into a GOP minority so, even when the GOP is in charge, he won’t really consider ending it (though if he or any other GOP Majority Leader could get a magic 60 GOPers in the Senate, the filibuster would be history).
And far too many Democrats (especially “progressives”) just don’t get that. The filibuster is atrocious, especially since the change that effectively ended the “talk your ass off” model that was once the only way it was done. Take us back to that time (though with a reduced number needed to call for cloture–an absolute 55 or a 3/5 of senators present and voting; any vote that is not a definite “nay”–such as “present” or “abstain”–being counted as a “yea”). If you can’t be bothered to get up and talk, talk, talk, then you have no business filibustering.
At some point today, 6/16 it seems Manchin has stated he might get behind a change that would require that the one objecting to a bill should have to actually debate the objection with a forty vote requirement to continue debate and prevent a vote which would only require a majority for the bill to pass. I had rather see this than the simple elimination of the super majority requirement. We might very well be in the minority again and it would be nice to have a tool to prevent the R’s from passing some stinker.
One suggestion I saw was to change it so it’s 55 votes rather than 60.
But really, they should either making it a talking filibuster – no breaks for the speakers – or get rid of it entirely.