Now is Not the Time to Crush a Cornerstone of the Senate’s Foundation
What is the purpose of the Senate?
The authors of the Constitution laid the foundation of the Senate without really knowing what it would look like once it was standing. They knew it would rival and restrain the House of Representatives. After all, the Senate has a higher age requirement. Members serve six-year terms. And they represent not just a district, but an entire state.
But it was clear from the beginning of the formation of the Senate that it would take time before the purpose of this body was truly realized.
For several decades in our nation’s history, it was the House of Representatives, not the Senate, that hosted the great debates and introduced major legislation. It wasn’t until the nation began to splinter in the shadow of slavery that the Senate came into its own.
And while the rules of the Senate gave us its basic structure, it was the members of the Senate — the people who made up this body — who had to stand up and lead.
We remember them today as lions of the Senate: Daniel Webster, John Calhoun, and Henry Clay. This body owes its status to them and their leadership, because they began to define the Senate in a way that no one had before.
Over time, the Senate became a place that values bipartisanship, deliberation, and compromise. In some of the toughest moments in history, the members of the Senate have used this body to lead, particularly when the President faltered in his own leadership and duty.
Take President Nixon. The Watergate scandal had weakened the presidency in ways that do-nothing Presidents never had. But the Senate, led by a member of the President’s own party, didn’t stand by and watch the void, unmoved. They filled the vacuum — for the good of the country.
It’s this kind of history that has shaped the Senate into what it is today: a body that examines, considers, and protects. Senator Byrd, the longest-serving Senator in U.S. history, once said: “the Senate is a source of wisdom and judgement — both on the actions of the lower house and on the executive.”
That is what the Senate is for. That is our purpose.
We achieve that purpose through customs and traditions. Through members who serve six-year terms and represent whole states, not just districts. Through rules that force bipartisanship, deliberation, and compromise.
Now, the Majority Leader has placed one of those rules on the chopping block. Because he can’t get the 60 votes needed to end the debate on the President’s nominee to the Supreme Court.
Should we be surprised to find ourselves here? After all, back in February, President Trump told the Majority Leader to change the rules if he had to.
Now, as this Administration closes in on its first 100 days without passing a single piece of major legislation, the Senate Majority Leader is ready to fulfill the President’s request and change the rule, instead of changing the nominee.
And the question I have for this body is, should we change the rules in order to give the executive branch a win? Should we be weakening the Senate at a time when the executive branch is so weak? Isn’t it our obligation to assert ourselves into this void, instead of receding from responsibility?
I can think of no instance in the history of any great legislative body in which a legislature decides to diminish its own power. And this is beyond strange in the world’s greatest deliberative body, in the world’s most powerful legislative chamber. For what good reason would we take away our own prerogatives?
This Administration has been ineffective. Now, the Senate Majority Leader is suggesting that the Senate respond to this executive weakness by weakening ourselves.
This is wrong. The purpose of the Senate is achieved through bipartisanship, deliberation, and compromise. The 60-vote threshold for Supreme Court nominees preserves these ideals. Changing this rule will make it harder to get there. It will make it harder for us to do our jobs well.
Look at the House of Representatives. Look at the way the House Intelligence Committee has dissolved into partisanship, unable to do its job.
Look at the country. Look at the campaign last year.
We are divided by partisanship and uncompromising ideology. Polarization is at an all-time high.
Now is not the time to crush a cornerstone of the Senate’s foundation.
This is not inevitable. This is not unstoppable. This is up to all of us. It is up to the members of the Senate to decide if we are going to damage the world’s greatest deliberative body at a time when the country needs us most.
The Senate has always been defined by its members. The rules, customs and traditions — they help. But at the end of the day, it’s the members of the Senate who — like Calhoun, like Webster, like Clay, like Kennedy, like Inouye, like Hatch, like McCain — who make the Senate relevant and necessary.
We’re going to find out who we are as Senators. And I would ask that at a minimum, the Senate take its time on this decision. Don’t rush. That’s not who we are, that’s not how we get to the best decisions.
This is now about the future of the Senate and the Supreme Court. The nuclear option will mean nominees for the Supreme Court won’t have to meet with the minority party to be confirmed. It will mean that the Senate’s habit of being slow — sometimes maddeningly so, but we know it’s in the best interests of the country — that will go away. That tradition that allows the center to hold will be undermined.
So to my Republican colleagues — please take a few weeks before you decide to change the Senate forever. Take your time here. This is probably one of the most consequential decisions you’re ever going to make in the United States Senate, because it’s about the Senate itself.
This is worth talking about. It’s worth deliberating over. It’s worth thinking over.
Go home and talk to your constituents. If you want to do this, do it three Mondays from now. But for goodness’ sake, there is no harm in just thinking about it.
All we need are three members of the Republican Party to go the Majority Leader and say, give us some time to figure out another way. Otherwise, you will make the Supreme Court, the Senate, and the country more extreme and more divided.
You will answer this difficult moment in history by weakening one of the last bastions of bipartisanship. And I believe you will regret it.
