I sent the information below to Senator Barrasso in late April. With no acknowledgement of receipt or reply from him, I then forwarded the letter below to the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) on May 8th. Neither party bothered to acknowledge receipt or to respond. Thus, I feel justified in sharing this information since I believe it concerns a matter of existential importance to our republic.
The current leadership of the Republican Party in the U.S. Senate seems totally paralyzed as to what may be the most important legislative proposal in many decades, i.e. the SAVE America Act (S.3752). This bill is in total conformance with Article I, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution which permits Congress to alter the manner of federal elections. It provides, among other election safeguards, that voters must provide documentary proof of citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections and requires photo identification to vote in said elections.
Leaving aside the silly, vacuous Democrat objections to this bill, Majority Leader Thune attributes the Republicans’ failure to move this legislation to his inability to obtain a majority of GOP senators to support proceeding with various measures, and thus his conclusion was to simply give up. Thune also cites resistance to attempts at measures such as the invocation of the old “talking filibuster” as a tool to force Democrats to speak incessantly as to their objections to a bill and to keep the Senate in continuous session during that process. Senate Rule XIX limits each filibustering senator to two permitted speeches, after which the majority party can pass the filibustered bill by simple majority vote.
Thune has also attempted to suggest that this would fail to meet with the approval of Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough who has held that post since the Democrats appointed her in 2012. There is no impediment to a senate majority leader replacing a parliamentarian, and both parties have done so in the past. Thune has said he is not willing to take such a “partisan” action.
Finally, claiming his inability to muster support for a “talking filibuster” and not wanting to be “partisan” by replacing the current parliamentarian, Thune then claims that the only remaining option is to do away with the Senate filibuster altogether.
With all that in mind, consider the following history of the vaunted “filibuster” and how the Democrats have somehow managed to get around it in the recent past.
In November 2013, Senate Democrats led by Harry Reid used the so-called “nuclear option” —a procedural maneuver—to change Senate rules via a simple majority vote rather than the required cloture threshold of 60 votes. This enabled the Democrats to approve by a simple majority (51) all executive and lower-court judicial nominations, while preserving other applications of the filibuster rule, e.g. as to legislation.
The Democrats pulled a similar sleight of hand in 2015 when they bypassed the requirements of Article 2, Section 2, Clause 2 (i.e. a 2/3 Senate vote to ratify all treaties) by having President Obama treat the Iran Nuclear Deal (JCPOA) as a “non-binding executive agreement” rather than as a formal treaty. Congress forced a review via the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, but Democrats successfully used a filibuster in September 2015 to block a Republican-led "resolution of disapproval," allowing the deal to proceed without a formal vote of approval.
Since congressional Democrats during the Obama administration had successfully defined the JCPOA as a political commitment or "executive agreement," it thus did not legally require the "advice and consent" two-thirds threshold of the Constitution. So, one wonders, why can’t the Republican Senate propose calling the SAVE Act a “presidential national security executive proclamation” or something similar to bypass the 60-vote threshold?
That the Republican-led Senate can’t find some novel way to get around the filibuster such as the Democrats have now done twice just this century defies credulity! Election integrity is indeed a national security issue of very high importance. The Democrats pulled their trickery and still left the basic filibuster rule intact. Are they so much more clever than the Republicans? Or do they perhaps simply have more “moxie” than their Republican counterparts?
Sadly, I have observed over the past 60 years that the Democrats in Congress always seem to be playing chess while our befuddled Republicans are playing checkers (and not very well at that).
If Senator Thune, et al, are indeed unable to get this vital legislation across the finish line soon there is a very real chance that the midterm election this November will produce yet another unreliable result such as was the case in the outrageous “election” of 2020. Isn’t one instance of election pilfering enough this century?
If this takes place, we will forfeit an outstanding opportunity to capture open senate seats in Michigan and New Hampshire; we will fail to oust a truly repugnant Democrat “senator” in Georgia; and we may well lose a Republican senate seat in Ohio. If these things happen, just watch what the Democrats do next!
So, you might ask, how does that concern Wyoming? In several ways. First, a failure of this magnitude will likely give the Republican Party a black eye in the mind of many voters at a time when we simply must make the upcoming election “too big to rig.” Every conservative vote is needed, and the current situation in the U.S. Senate may make it difficult for many Republicans to justify participating in the process at all.
Secondly, it is well known that the Wyoming Senate has been. over the past several years, the place where several badly needed conservative bills have gone to die. Thus, unless we muster a large majority of genuine conservatives to vote in the August primary election, we will have little chance of ousting the Wyoming legislators (in both houses) who have blocked conservative efforts at implementing the planks of the Wyoming Republican Platform which were agreed to by majorities of Wyoming Republicans statewide.
Finally, Wyoming would do well to emulate in our state elections a pattern we’re now seeing in Republican primaries in other states, most notably Louisiana and Texas, where ensconced establishment senators have been shown the door in favor of genuine conservatives. Republicans who vote alongside Democrats in their state legislatures are also being defeated in places such as Indiana. So, it can be done! All it takes is an electorate who has had enough of politicians making empty promises, masquerading as conservatives while voting as covert Democrats as revealed by their official record votes in the Wyoming legislature.
Charles Cole,
Sheridan