Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, has an idea to end the federal shutdown: “Let’s make this a Republican-only vote.”
The first-term senator pitched the notion during an appearance Wednesday night on Fox News, lamenting that the filibuster was allowing Democrats to “hold us hostage” indefinitely. His simple solution would be to use the GOP’s majority to simply go around the Democrats entirely.
“My point of view would be this: We have almost all Republicans on board,” Moreno told host Laura Ingraham. “Maybe it’s time to think about the filibuster. You say look, the Democrats would have done it. Let’s just vote with Republicans. We got 52 Republicans. Let’s go. And let’s open the government. It may get to that.”
Here’s where Moreno is unfortunately correct: It really is wild that a majority of the Senate isn’t enough to fund the government.
Moreno went on to make several false claims about the Democrats’ demands for reopening the government, including “re-funding USAID” and “abortions on demand.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has been clear that his party’s goal is to extend a set of Affordable Care Act subsidies that are due to expire at the end of the year. If that happens, according to a report from the nonprofit health care analysis organization KFF, then millions of people’s insurance premiums will skyrocket. (The Ohio Capital Journal reports that more than 400,000 of Moreno’s constituents would be in that number.)
But here’s where Moreno is unfortunately correct: It really is wild that a majority of the Senate isn’t enough to fund the government. Previous Congresses have both made it easier to hold up legislation, nixing the requirement to hold the Senate floor continuously, while also allowing majority votes for presidential nominees, up to and including Supreme Court justices. They’ve even developed special rules like budget reconciliation to avoid the filibuster altogether. But even stopgap funding bills, like the House-passed version the Senate has now rejected six times, remain subject to the legislative filibuster’s provisions.
That has tended to suit Republicans just fine, though, especially as Democrats have previously been loath to risk taking the blame for any federal shutdown. Moreover, as I wrote in 2021, the GOP has benefited far more from the legislative filibuster than Democrats, as its agenda is less dependent on new legislation to enact. And when Republicans are in the minority, they’re more than happy to use the 60-vote threshold as leverage to water down Democratic legislation in the name of bipartisanship. It’s easy to see how someone just arriving in the chamber might look at the filibuster rule and think it makes no sense. Moreno is still a new face in the Senate, having won his seat only last year. It’s easy to see how someone just arriving in the chamber might look at the filibuster rule and think it makes no sense. But the more seasoned members of his caucus, including all the GOP leadership, have been pretty quick to shoot down the idea of curtailing the filibuster to reopen the government. As Politico noted Thursday, “nuking the legislative filibuster sparks unease and outright opposition with a number of GOP senators, who worry that it will come back to bite them when they are in the minority.” In theory, then, this would be an ideal chance to showcase the supposed benefits of the filibuster that its supporters have long lauded. Namely, if fostering bipartisan agreement is really the filibuster’s main impetus, as many GOP senators have argued, then eight days of impasse should be enough to open negotiations toward a bipartisan solution. Instead, Republicans are trying to have it both ways: refusing to treat Democrats’ votes as worth courting while still preserving the right to blockade future Democratic bills. Last year I urged Senate Democrats to finally end the filibuster, even if it looked like the White House might return to GOP control. But the onus now falls on Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., to defend the institution even as it hamstrings his party’s agenda. It would probably be too much to hope that Moreno keeps this same energy should he find himself serving in the minority during his time in Washington.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He focuses on politics and policymaking at the federal level, including Congress and the White House. 
