WASHINGTON — The two leaders of the U.S. Senate dueled over the preservation of the filibuster on Monday, with Mitch McConnell accusing Chuck Schumer of readying an attack on the institution’s core identity to permit widespread changes to how elections are run.
“The Senate Democratic leaders are trying to use a big lie to bully and break their own members into breaking their word, breaking the rules and breaking the Senate,” McConnell said on the Senate floor, employing some of his most dramatic rhetoric on the subject to date. “The excuses put forward for this behavior are entirely fake. The supposed justifications are simply false.”
Schumer, the Democratic leader from New York, is planning to hold a vote this week on one or more of his party’s proposals to liberalize voting across the country. If Republicans block those bills, he is threatening to hold a debate on scrapping the filibuster – the rule that requires most Senate legislation attain 60 votes for passage.
