Just four years ago, 27 Democrats who are still in the Senate signed off on a letter insisting the filibuster should be kept. But now that roles are reversed, their own party is in charge of the chamber, and President Joe Biden is “too weak” to fight back, they want to change the rules, according to Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark.
That’s because they’re “getting pushed around by the radical left,” a force that Biden also won’t be able to fight, Cotton said on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom.”
“They want to make Washington, D.C. a state and grant amnesty to illegal aliens,” Cotton said. “They know they don’t have the votes to do that, but they push around Joe Biden who appears to be so weak he is caving to them.
“I don’t think they’ll push around [Sen.] Joe Manchin,[D-W.Va.,] who said he respects the traditions of the Senate. He wants to protect the interests of workers in West Virginia and Arkansas and so many other states.”
Manchin, he added, “has been very clear he won’t vote to change the rules” reducing the Senate’s threshold for approving bills at 60 votes in order to end debate and have a final vote.
“That’s what the tradition has been, going on 40 years,” Cotton said. “Before that, it was more than that; 200 years ago, it required all the senators to agree to end debate. That’s the tradition of the Senate. Our founders wanted the Senate to play to make sure any major changes to the laws of our country were considered and careful and deliberate.”
That role is important, he added, because “otherwise you will get things like the Green New Deal and amnesty for illegal aliens and packing the Supreme Court.”
Cotton also pointed out that former President Donald Trump pushed then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to end the filibuster in 2017 and 2018, but the Kentucky senator refused because Republicans “respect the traditions and customs and rules of the U.S. Senate. We respect the rights of the minority. We want to have an open and fair debate and we want to compromise.”
Meanwhile, if the Democrats don’t want to end the filibuster but instead return to on-floor debates, as Biden suggested in an interview Wednesday, Cotton warned that he has no problem with fighting “around the clock for days on end” to stop things like amnesty for illegal immigrants or statehood for Washington, D.C.
“That’s what they want,” Cotton said. “The far left is angry that they don’t have popular support for their agenda so they are trying to change the rules and ram it through when they have power before we win back the Senate and House next year. That’s what this is about. That’s why the Republicans are going to stand up firmly against that radical agenda.”
Cotton also took offense at the news that the Biden administration has, in essence, ordered the Border Patrol to not allow members of the press to ride along with them and tour the border with Mexico.
“They don’t want the truth getting out,” he said. “When you have hundreds of people paying the drug cartels $300 per person crossing the river and tying up the Border Patrol’s hands with children and unaccompanied minors, the Border Patrol becomes babysitters, bus drivers, and nurses. Do you know what they’re not doing? They’re not looking for the people on the terrorist watch list going in … there is a real crisis on the border. The Biden administration won’t admit it. They created it by executive orders rescinding Trump’s policies that were working.”
Source: Newmax
