Merkley describes McConnell’s use of the filibuster as having “broken the cycle in which government can function.”…
As Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell announces he will step down as the Senate’s Republican leader after 17 years — the longest term in Senate history — we speak with Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, who says, “McConnell’s legacy has been one of obstruction.” He describes McConnell’s “aggressive” use of the filibuster, the topic of Merkley’s new book, Filibustered!: How to Fix the Broken Senate and Save America, as having “broken the cycle in which government can function.” Merkley also discusses Republican manipulation of judicial appointments and the cloture motion in pushing the legislature further right.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you about their breaking news yesterday about Senator McConnell stepping down as the Republican leader of the Senate, a position he has held longer than any senator in history. He’s going to step down next November, in a move that’s expected to strengthen Trump’s control of the Republican Party, served 17 years as Republican leader. I wanted to talk about his record. He said he plans to finish as senator. During his leadership, McConnell successfully blocked voting on Democratic bills, from gun control to election integrity, ramming through Republican priorities, including Trump’s $2 trillion tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans, helped stack — Trump stack federal courts with far-right judges, reversed the 60-vote threshold for confirming Supreme Court justices, allowing Trump to install three right-wing justices on the bench, a few years after stonewalling President Obama’s Supreme Court justice pick Merrick Garland. It’s absolutely amazing, what happened, saying, when Scalia died — I want to play a clip of McConnell himself talking about why Merrick Garland would not be able to have a hearing before the election the following November.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that was 2016. Meanwhile, September 2020, Senate Democrats slammed Senate Majority Leader McConnell for rushing to fill Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat so close to the November election, holding hearings on the nomination of the conservative federal judge Amy Coney Barrett when early voting had already begun in some states. She was confirmed a week before Biden’s election. Senator Merkley, your assessment of McConnell’s tenure?
SEN. JEFF MERKLEY: Yes. Back in the mid-1990s, when Gingrich was shifting strategy on the House side — and that shift in strategy was to say, “Rather than cooperate with the majority to get some things into bills, we’ll basically obstruct them as much as we can and then argue that their failures mean they should be replaced,” and that proved to be an effective strategy — McConnell said, “Gingrich gives obstruction a good name.” But in the Senate, he had tools Gingrich could never have dreamed of. He had the nomination process, which every objection to closing debate means a nomination could take a week, so it could really slow things down. And then he had the 60-vote requirement for closing debate. And if you flip the math, it means that in the minority, with 41 votes, you can paralyze the Senate on policy bills.
