Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has a message for Democrats: Don't end the legislative
filibuster if you
win control, or you'll regret it.
"The important thing for our Democratic friends to remember is you may not be in total control in the future. And any time you start fiddling around with the rules of the Senate you always need to put yourself in the other fellow's shoes and just imagine what might happen when the winds shift," the Kentucky Republican told reporters on Tuesday.
McConnell called on "responsible Democratic senators" not to be "stampeded by the hard left" and preserve "the one institution that guaranteed that America stayed in the middle of the road."
McConnell's remarks come as Democrats debate among themselves whether to preserve the super-majority requirement to pass legislation if they win control of the White House and Congress this fall and their agenda is obstructed. Numerous progressive activists, as well as former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.,
support its abolition.
Democrats who favor the change, including potential vice presidential contender Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., say the 60-vote rule gives a minority of senators a permanent veto that makes progressive governance impossible, particularly given the structure of the Senate that gives small red states like Idaho and Wyoming the same representation as large blue states like California and New York.
"If Mitch McConnell is going to do to the next Democratic president what he did to President Obama, and that is try to block every single thing he does, then we are going to roll back the filibuster," Warren
said during a presidential primary debate in late February.
But other Democrats like the power it affords them to shape and block legislation while in the minority, with some of them holding more centrist views,
such as Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V.
