During his 2022 campaign for Senate, then-Lt. Gov John Fetterman of Pennsylvania declared that if elected, he would vote to eliminate the Senate filibuster. At the time, 48 Democratic senators had backed overriding the 60-vote threshold in the name of passing an updated Voting Rights Act and codifying Roe v. Wade. They fell two votes short, though, thanks to Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.
Fetterman’s win that November meant Democrats needed just one of Manchin or Sinema to reform the filibuster. Yet neither budged. Now they are retired, but Fetterman declared in a Washington Post op-ed Monday that he intends to take up their cause.
Halfway through his term, Fetterman now claims that he has seen the light: The filibuster is in fact a necessary tool for compromise. Every stale argument Fetterman makes mirrors those made by his former colleagues and shows how much he shares their cowardice.
Every stale argument Fetterman makes mirrors those made by his former colleagues and shows how much he shares their cowardice.
Much of Fetterman’s essay is a counterfactual, highlighting what the GOP would have done had Democrats lifted the filibuster during the Biden administration. “If we win the Senate, we will not have enough votes to override the 60-vote threshold on our own and will once again have to find common ground with our Republican colleagues,” Fetterman declared, before smarmily adding, “assuming the Democratic Party’s narrative on the filibuster remains what it has become under Trump: that we love it.”
First off, senator, speak for yourself. Second, I must have missed the great feats of legislative compromise that have taken place with Republicans in total control of Washington, as President Donald Trump ignores Congress whenever it’s convenient.
As for Fetterman’s fear that a Senate run on majority vote will “become a smaller version of the House of Representatives,” he should reread the Constitution. The filibuster is nowhere in the founding document; Article I assumes that lawmakers in both chambers are making their decisions based on majority votes. The automatic number of senators per state, no matter their population, and six-year term limits were meant to be the prime separator between the upper and lower chambers, not a requirement for an arbitrary supermajority. And the concept of a formal “minority party” didn’t exist when the Constitution was ratified.
Instead, the filibuster arose as a way for the slaveholding states of the South to prevent actions that would affect their peculiar institution. Senate rules at the time had no method of forcing a vote and the right to “unlimited debate” on an issue was held up as the purest form of democracy. Senators like John C. Calhoun cleverly framed this as protecting the rights of the minority, as they knew that they would otherwise be outvoted. Holding the floor to prevent anything else getting done was the legislative equivalent of a temper tantrum empowered by a quirk of the Senate’s rules.
“Compromise,” then, has always been a post-facto justification for the filibuster’s existence. Has it prompted some legislation where Republicans and Democrats have found common ground? Yes. But there would be nothing to stop compromise from taking place in the absence of the filibuster. A bill that draws both sides together and has a clear pathway to passage via a majority vote is more likely to make it to the Senate floor than the same bill under current House rules, where almost every bit of business must first pass through the Speaker.
And as I’ve argued time and again, the filibuster is more prone to harm Democratic legislative priorities, of which there are many, compared to the GOP’s legislative priorities, which are few. As we’ve seen in this Congress, with its obsession with reconciliation bills, there are plenty of avenues for Republicans to skirt the filibuster to pass tax cuts and funds for Trump’s war against Iran. Most of the GOP’s remaining efforts can be expended on filling the federal bench with conservatives, which only requires a majority, and casting a blind eye to Trump’s overreaches. The SAVE America Act is a rare exception — but one that currently lacks 50 votes in the Senate, let alone 60.
Fetterman’s announcement may be a case of hedging his bets with whichever side wins the majority next year.
Incredibly, Trump understands this issue better than Fetterman. For months now, the president has pressured Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., to abolish the filibuster and using the specter of Democrats doing the same as a warning. If given the chance, Trump has claimed as recently as last week, the Democrats could make Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia states and use those new seats to steamroll their agenda. Fetterman’s op-ed makes clear that he’s not at all in favor of this (frankly, fantastic) idea.
Since winning his seat, Fetterman has consistently trended toward the center-right on issues like Israel, immigration and the war with Iran. There’s been considerable scuttlebutt and discourse surrounding whether he’ll face a serious primary challenge in 2028, whether he’ll leave the party before then and whether as an independent, he’d caucus with the Democrats or the GOP. Tellingly, the last two Democratic senators to leave the party were also the two who blocked filibuster reform: Manchin and Sinema.
Fetterman’s announcement may be a case of hedging his bets with whichever side wins the majority next year. In recycling the same arguments as Manchin and Sinema, he is similarly giving himself cover to potentially stand with Republicans without being singled out among his caucus. As I noted years ago, absent the filibuster, in a slim majority, Fetterman could be the deciding vote. It’s much easier to insist on dragging 10 Republicans along for any ride as political cover than be the only reason a bill stalled out or passes. Now, as then, Fetterman’s defense of the filibuster masks what would be naked self-protection in the veneer of bipartisan idealism.
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