Democrats used filibuster 327 times, compared to only once by GOP in 2020: Report
President Joe Biden has been increasingly critical of the Senate filibuster, calling it a Jim Crow relic and saying it has been widely abused despite Democrats using it over 300 times in 2020, compared to once by Republicans.
“After @POTUS @JoeBiden denounced the rampant abuse of the filibuster last year, we did some digging,” Fox News anchor John Roberts tweeted Friday. “Republicans used it once. Democrats used it 327 times.”
In his first solo press conference since taking office, Biden said he agreed with former President Barack Obama’s newly adopted belief that the filibuster tactic is a “Jim Crow relic.”
Biden also expressed frustration with how often the filibuster has been used and specifically took issue with how it was “abused” last year.
“I was going to give you the statistics, but you probably know them, that it used to be that — that from between 1917 to 1971, the filibuster existed, there was a total of 58 motions to break a filibuster that whole time,” Biden said in the press conference. “Last year alone, there were 5 times that many. So it's being abused in a gigantic way.”
In 2005, Biden argued against the elimination of the filibuster, which many Democrats are encouraging now in order to push legislation through the 50-50 split in the Senate.
"It is not only a bad idea, it upsets the constitutional design, and it disservices the country," then-Sen. Biden said at the time about eliminating the practice. "No longer would the Senate be that ‘different kind of legislative body’ that the founders intended. No longer would the Senate be the ‘saucer’ to cool the passions of the immediate majority."
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