Democrats Once Pledged to Protect the Filibuster. Van Hollen's Plan Asks Them to Forget Their Own Record

Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who is challenging Chuck Schumer to lead the incoming Democratic Senate majority, wants the chamber's 60-vote threshold for most legislation gone. Van Hollen argued that the Senate should let a majority act, "so that means 51 votes," and he called the filibuster undemocratic, The Hill reported. Schumer has not said whether he would back scrapping the threshold, and the question has divided Senate Democrats.

The caucus Van Hollen hopes to lead is not united behind him. On Saturday, Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania said a Van Hollen win would be troubling, citing his colleague's criticism of Israel, and suggested he could reconsider his place in the party, Bloomberg reported.

Van Hollen's argument has a problem that has nothing to do with Israel. It runs straight into his own party's record.

In April 2017, 61 senators from both parties, led by Republican Susan Collins and Democrat Chris Coons, signed a letter urging Senate leaders to preserve the 60-vote threshold for legislation, according to Coons's office. The letter set the separate fight over nominations aside and focused on legislation, where the signers asked leaders to keep the 60-vote rule in place.

That letter was signed when Republicans controlled the Senate and the White House, and Democrats had every reason to want the protection. The question for the senators who signed it is a simple one: if keeping the rule was a matter of principle in 2017, why should it disappear the moment Democrats hold the gavel?

Democrats have also used the rule to stop legislation they opposed. In June 2020, Senate Democrats blocked debate on Sen. Tim Scott's police reform bill, which failed 55-45 when 60 votes were needed to move forward, CBS News reported. Democrats argued at the time that the bill did not go far enough. Whatever one thinks of that judgment, it was the filibuster that gave the minority the power to make it.

A procedure that Democrats used to block a Republican bill in the minority does not become undemocratic once they are in the majority. Either the 60-vote rule is a legitimate check on a bare majority, or it is not. It cannot change character depending on which party is counting the votes.

The record on the other side of the aisle is instructive. When President Trump urged Senate Republicans to scrap the filibuster during last year's government shutdown, GOP leaders declined, and Majority Leader John Thune's office said his position was unchanged, CNN reported.

That was not an easy call. Republicans held the majority and could have passed bills on party-line votes. They kept the guardrail anyway, because they understood that the same rule would protect them the next time voters put them in the minority. That is now exactly where they are headed.

The case for the 60-vote threshold is not about protecting one party. It is about the kind of laws the country gets. A bill that must win some votes from the other side tends to be more durable, because the next majority has a harder time tearing it out. Laws passed on a party-line 51 can be repealed on a party-line 51, and families, businesses, churches and schools are whipsawed every time the Senate changes hands.

The Senate was built to be the slower, steadier chamber, where passing passions get a second look before they become federal law. Remove the 60-vote rule for legislation and the Senate starts to behave like a second House of Representatives.

Some of the strongest resistance is coming from inside the Democratic caucus. Fetterman wrote this summer that he was wrong to campaign on ending the filibuster, calling the 60-vote rule a vital line of defense while President Trump is in office, in an op-ed posted on his Senate website. Conservatives will not share all of his reasons, but his conclusion is the right one. Schumer, who wants to keep his job, has so far declined to commit either way.

Senate Democrats will choose their leader next month. If Van Hollen wins, one of the first fights of the new majority could be over the rules themselves. That is the moment for voters to ask every senator who signed the 2017 letter whether their word still holds.

Every majority eventually becomes the minority. The rule that frustrates Democrats today is the same rule that protected them in 2020, and it will protect them again the next time the voters change their minds. Fetterman sees that. Van Hollen should, too.