The government has been shut down for nearly a month, and Trump made headlines last night by floating the idea of eliminating the filibuster in order to end the shutdown. Jim Geraghty, on today’s edition of The Editors, points out that this isn’t the first time Trump has pushed to eliminate the filibuster, and that it would be ill-advised for Republicans to cave to his whim here.
“If you get rid of the filibuster, well then yes, you can pass a whole bunch of stuff with less than 60 votes and that’ll be great,” Jim says. “But the next time you’re in the minority, the other side with less than 60 votes can get rid of all that and also enact all of their worst ideas.”
Jim points out, “We are discussing this on Halloween. The government’s been shut down for a month. SNAP food stamps run out as of tomorrow. You’re starting to see more and more airport delays because of a shortage of air traffic controllers, because unsurprisingly, people are less motivated to show up for work when they’re not getting paid.”
In light of all this, “It looked like pressure was about to get really, really high. We saw the federal government unions coming out and telling Democrats, ‘Pass a clean CR, reopen the government.'” But then Trump came out with his push to end the filibuster: “Every time you get rid of the filibuster, it comes back to bite you in the butt. But for some reason, Trump really wants to do this.”
The Editors podcast is recorded on Tuesdays and Fridays every week and is available wherever you listen to podcasts.