Trump Makes Unusual Case for Eliminating Legislative Filibuster

President Trump urged the Senate to eliminate its 60-vote threshold for ending debate on most legislative matters Tuesday morning, though his reasoning appears to be garbled.

"The U.S. Senate should switch to 51 votes, immediately, and get Healthcare and TAX CUTS approved, fast and easy," Trump tweeted. "Dems would do it, no doubt!"

The president's suggestion seems to contain a couple of disconnected points. His justification for eliminating the legislative filibuster is twofold: One, it would help advance specific policy priorities, and two, the minority party would take the same action if it were in charge. The first is untrue. The second is purely political and a judgment call.

The American Health Care Act—or, more likely, the Senate GOP's yet-unwritten health care bill—could already become law without 60 votes in the upper chamber. The legislation is traveling the path of "budget reconciliation," a procedure that bypasses the three-fifths requirement. Under this mechanism, the Senate can approve the health care bill with just 51 yeas—a reality untouched by the legislative filibuster or how the majority might change it. (Granted, Trump wants to alter the nation's health care system in ways beyond what Congress can achieve through reconciliation, like regulations on selling insurance across state lines.) The assumption has been that tax reform would take the same shape next fiscal year, though it'd be contingent on Congress passing a new budget: a daunting task.

But the only logical reading of Trump's tweet is that filibuster reform would expedite health care and tax legislation; the Trump administration has no other major agenda items before the legislature that the act would affect.