By: The Editorial Board – wsj.com – September 24, 2024

She wants to remove the biggest obstacle to one-party progressive rule.

Kamala Harris is still keeping most of her agenda incognito, but she gave a strong hint about its direction on Tuesday when she blessed the Democratic plan to blow up the Senate’s filibuster rule. This would turn the Senate into the House for the purposes of passing legislation, which means a wide open door for progressive priorities.

She’s couching this procedural coup as related only to imposing a national abortion law on all 50 states. But anyone paying attention knows that’s a ruse. Once the 60-vote filibuster rule ends for one piece of non-budget legislation, it will end for everything.

Chuck Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader, recently said he wants to break the filibuster for a national abortion law and pass a bill that would impose California-style voting rules on all 50 states. Good-bye voter identification, and hello nationwide ballot harvesting.

It won’t stop there. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse says he wants to break the filibuster to restructure the Supreme Court. Sen. Bernie Sanders has recently given up on his former institutional objections and now favors 51 votes to pass his proposals.

Every interest group in the Democratic coalition will demand that its priorities pass with 51 votes too. Think statehood for the District of Columbia. And think Big Labor’s PRO Act that would ban right-to-work laws nationwide, among other ideas that would normally require bipartisan majorities to pass the Senate.

If you think we exaggerate, listen to Sen. Joe Manchin, who isn’t running for re-election this year after having protected the filibuster while Democrats ran the House and Senate in the first two years of the Biden Presidency.

“Shame on her,” the West Virginia Senator said Tuesday. “She knows the filibuster is the Holy Grail of democracy. It’s the only thing that keeps us talking and working together. If she gets rid of that, then this would be the House on steroids.”

Mr. Manchin knows from long experience that the filibuster forces compromise, giving Senators leverage to demand legislative concessions. Mr. Manchin used that leverage to force Mr. Schumer to pare back President Biden’s Build Back Better cradle-to-grave entitlement state. The Inflation Reduction Act that Mr. Manchin voted for was bad enough, but it could have been worse.

Mr. Schumer said recently that he’ll have enough votes to change the filibuster rule if Democrats win 50 Senate seats. If they also take the House and White House in November, Vice President Tim Walz would become the 51st vote to break the 60-vote rule and ram through whatever Democrats want. With Mr. Manchin and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema both gone in January, don’t expect another Democrat to stand against the progressive crowd.

That’s especially true now that Ms. Harris has urged them on. Her filibuster stand gives her secret agenda away.

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Source: Harris Wants the Senate Filibuster Gone – WSJ