“The filibuster allows a minority of senators to veto virtually any legislation, unless the majority can convince 60 of the Senate\u2019s 100 members to break that filibuster. Because it is quite rare for either party to control 60 seats in the Senate \u2014 the last time it happened was a seven-month period in 2009\u201310 \u2014 this means that the minority party can block nearly all bills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Filibusters used to be exceedingly rare. One common method used to measure the frequency of filibusters is to count the number of \u201ccloture\u201d votes, the process used to break a filibuster, taken every year. And from 1917 until 1970, the Senate held less than one a year.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n That number started to rise well before McConnell became his party\u2019s Senate leader. But the rate of cloture votes doubled in 2007, when McConnell first became minority leader. And it has grown rapidly since then. Between 2010 and 2020, the Senate took more than 80 cloture votes every year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This escalation in filibusters, a tactic spearheaded by McConnell, has transformed the role of Congress in society. And it\u2019s similarly transformed what kind of legislation governing parties even attempt to pass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the two years when President Joe Biden<\/a> had a Democratic majority in Congress, for example, all of his major legislative accomplishments \u2014 the Inflation Reduction Act<\/a>, the infrastructure bill<\/a>, the CHIPS Act<\/a>, and the American Rescue Plan<\/a> \u2014 were spending bills and not regulatory legislation such as a minimum wage hike or a new voting rights<\/a> law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A major reason why is that it is sometimes possible to bypass a filibuster of spending legislation through a process known as \u201cbudget reconciliation<\/a>,\u201d but reconciliation cannot be used to regulate. So presidents who wish to accomplish anything at all in Congress must limit their ambition to taxing and spending unless they can convince their opposition to play ball. Parties try their best to get creative within those categories (and sometimes succeed), but it is a huge constraint on policymaking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet, while McConnell essentially eliminated Congress\u2019s ability to regulate, the Republican Party has still enjoyed tremendous regulatory policymaking success over the last decade or more. And the reason why is that Republicans don\u2019t need a functioning Congress to set policy, so long as they control the courts.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “While McConnell was busy cutting Congress out of the policymaking process, a Supreme Court<\/a> dominated by Republican appointees racked up an impressive array of conservative policy victories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Court dismantled much of America\u2019s campaign finance law<\/a>. It neutralized key provisions of the Voting Rights Act<\/a>, allowed red states to opt out of Obamacare\u2019s Medicaid expansion<\/a>, gave religious conservatives a sweeping new right to defy federal and state laws<\/a>, sabotaged unions<\/a>, laid waste to US gun laws<\/a>, abolished affirmative action<\/a> at nearly all universities, and eliminated the constitutional right to abortion<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps most significantly of all, the Court has rapidly consolidated power within itself, at the expense of the two elected branches of government. In many existing federal laws, for example, Congress delegated significant policymaking authority to federal agencies such as the EPA or the Department of Labor. But the Supreme Court gave itself a largely limitless veto power<\/a> over any of those agency regulations \u2014 as long as five justices deem an agency\u2019s action to be too significant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And so the Supreme Court is now the locus of policymaking in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This happened in no small part because of McConnell\u2019s Senate leadership. Under President Barack Obama, McConnell\u2019s Republican caucus aggressively blockaded judicial nominees, including holding a Supreme Court seat open for more than a year<\/a> until Trump could fill it with the archconservative Justice Neil Gorsuch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then, once Trump came into office, McConnell transformed the Senate into a factory that rolled out newly confirmed judges<\/a> almost as fast as the Trump White House could find conservatives to nominate to the bench. The result is a judiciary that routinely<\/a> engages<\/a> in political hardball to advance the GOP\u2019s policy priorities.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n