McConnell: Harris-backed filibuster rule change would 'turn America into California'

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) on Thursday warned that if Democrats follow through on Vice President Harris’s pledge to eliminate the filibuster to codify abortion protections, it would “turn America into California” by unleashing a flood of liberal reforms.

He said Democrats would expand the Supreme Court once they eliminated the 60-vote threshold for passing legislation through the Senate, noting liberals' strong antipathy for the court, which now has a 6-3 conservative majority.

“So it would fundamentally, in my view, turn America to California,” he told Politico’s “Playbook” in an interview.

“And I think that is a major structural change to the country,” he warned.

McConnell accused Democratic reformers such as Harris, the party's presidential nominee, and progressive senators who want to reform the filibuster of wanting to destroy the fundamental nature of the chamber to achieve their policy ends.

“What they want to do is break the institution in order to achieve what they want to achieve,” McConnell told Politico.

McConnell, speaking on the Senate floor Wednesday, noted Harris previously said she would favor eliminating the filibuster to pass the sweeping Green New Deal to transition the United States to a clean-energy economy.

And he pointed out that Democrats tried to create an exception to the filibuster to pass voting rights reform in January 2022.

“Her willingness to shatter the institution of the Senate is not unique. Nearly every single one of our Democratic colleagues was willing to do it two years ago, and they would have succeeded had two members of their own caucus not stood in the breach,” he said on the floor.

“The vice president’s latest comments are not novel, but they are shocking, no less so than the votes our colleagues cast her on Jan. 19, 2022,” he said. “There’s nothing normal or rational about blowing up the dam holding back simple majority rule.

“And the fact that a major political party has welcomed this shortsighted radicalism into the mainstream will be their eternal shame,” he added.

McConnell in his interview with Politico knocked down the idea that Democrats could “carve out” exceptions to the filibuster to pass voting rights and abortion rights legislation but maintain the 60-vote threshold for other policy areas.

“There’s no way you can have a minor carve-out,” he said. “Because then you’ll come up with the next idea that’s more important than the rule — then, practically, it’s over,” he said.

Democrats now control a 51-to-49-seat Senate majority, but political handicappers say Republicans are more likely to control the upper chamber in 2025 because they are favored to win the seats now held by retiring Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) and Sen. Jon Tester (D) in Republican-leaning Montana.

Some Democrats have also raised concerns about carving out a major exception to the filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade, the 1973 law that established a right to abortion.

“We should approach it very carefully because what goes around comes around. That’s one of the few permanent rules of the United States Senate,” Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), who was elected to the Senate in 1997, told The Hill this week.

The veteran lawmaker said he supports passing legislation to establish a national right to abortion but urged trying to persuade Republican colleagues to vote for such a measure before changing the filibuster rule.

“I think it would be good to have a national abortion [law] to protect the reproductive freedom of women, and I think we should try to get it, but I don’t think the first procedure would be to change the rules of the Senate,” Reed told The Hill.