MANCHIN: "I'm not going to bust a filibuster. If they think they want to jam things down people's throat, no. There's a process. If we can't get 1 or 2 or 3 Republicans to vote with things that we should be doing in a bipartisan-now we need 10-I'm not going down that path...
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...And why do you think there's a Byrd Rule called after me? Cuz I knew how they'd try to circumvent and go around and destroy it.' We're not going to do any of that." https://youtu.be/CCOnHaFSJag?t=1680 … ...
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What Manchin is basically saying here is he won't let the Byrd Rule -- which narrows what is permissible in the filibuster-proof budget reconciliation process to items with direct budgetary impact--get semi-nuked by simple majority votes overruling the Senate parliamentarian...
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..and his reasoning is fascinating. He's tying it to the rule's namesake and legendary West Virginia senator Robert Byrd. Byrd is beloved in West Virginia. But conservatives have long cited Byrd to remind people of the Democrats' historic tie to southern segregationists...
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...Further, many Democrats deride the filibuster, as Obama did, as "Jim Crow relic." Byrd was one of the segregationists who tried to filibuster the 1964 Civil Rights Act...
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...and now Manchin is holding up Byrd as the reason why the filibuster should stay in place and the Byrd Rule intact. Obviously, this will drive progressive opponents of filibuster over the edge. Obviously, Manchin must know that...
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...But Manchin is more interested in playing to West Virginia pride than to his progressive critics. Having said all that...
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...I don't think this means Manchin wouldn't vote for a Covid relief bill on a party-line via reconciliation. I do think it means Manchin is still very interested in getting Rs on board, and that he won't let the relief bill become a vehicle for other progressive priorities.
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Apologies for my error upthread regarding how the parliamentarian could be overruled. (See below, though I believe the chair/presiding officer doesn’t have to be VP if she is not present.) Though if Ds put $15 in with less than 50 votes, Manchin could threaten to sink the billhttps://twitter.com/mucha_carlos/status/1357482814824931333 …
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This is kind of the point though—the founding fathers already built in a “check” by giving every state two senators. They didn’t feel there needed to be an additional check (a filibuster).
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And the founding fathers didn’t create the filibuster, it was an accident from a rule change.
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