Sen. McConnell Responds to Biden’s Latest Call to Abolish the Senate Filibuster

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 24, 2022. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) signaled Thursday that Republicans will not support President Joe Biden’s advocating for abolishing the filibuster to pass a bill to codify Roe v. Wade.

“The foremost thing we should do is make it clear how outrageous this decision was,” Biden said during remarks in Spain on Thursday. “I believe we have to codify Roe v. Wade in the law, and the way to do that is to make sure that Congress votes to do that.”

That move drew a rebuke from Republicans, namely McConnell who said Biden’s claim was “unmerited and dangerous.”

“Attacking a core American institution like the Supreme Court from the world stage is below the dignity of the president,” McConnell told reporters. “He’s upset that the court said the people, through their elected representatives, will have a say on abortion policy. That does not destabilize democracy—it affirms it. By contrast, it is behavior like the president’s that undermines equal justice and the rule of law.”

McConnell was the majority leader when three of then-President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominees were confirmed by the Senate: Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. The three were instrumental in striking down Roe v. Wade last week.

And McConnell was the majority leader when the Senate blocked then-President Barack Obama’s attempt to nominate Merrick Garland, who is now the attorney general, to the Supreme Court after Justice Antonin Scalia’s death.

“It’s the single-most consequential decision I’ve made in my public career,” McConnell told Bloomberg on Wednesday of blocking Garland from the court. The GOP senator suggested that the decision was, in part, responsible for the Supreme Court’s ruling last Friday.

Filibuster Comments

Biden’s comments to abolish the filibuster echo remarks that he made earlier this year when he supported ending the 200-year-old Senate rule to pass a Democrat-backed voting law. During the 2020 campaign, Biden often said he doesn’t support abolishing the filibuster, which was set up to protect the minority party’s interests in Congress.

“The one thing that has been destabilizing is the outrageous behavior of the Supreme Court of the United States,” Biden said at a NATO summit in Spain. “And overruling not only Roe v. Wade, but essentially challenging the right to privacy. We’ve been a leader in the world in terms of personal rights and privacy rights. And it is a mistake, in my view, for the Supreme Court [to] do what it did.”

Meanwhile, when asked last week about potentially expanding, or packing, the Supreme Court with Democrat-nominated justices, a Biden spokespreson said he’s not considering it. Left-wing groups and lawmakers have called to pack the Supreme Court with more justices and to abolish the filibuster to pass favored legislation in the 50–50 Senate.

“I’ve been asked it before—and I think the president himself … about expanding the court,” Jean-Pierre told reporters over the past weekend. “That is something that the president does not agree with. That is not something that he wants to do.”