Analysis: What you need to know about the drama unfolding between Texas Republicans and Democrats
Now, Democrats in Texas have robbed the Republicans who control the state government of their ability to pass a bill to impose new voting restrictions by leaving the state — leaving the legislature short of a quorum, or the minimum number of lawmakers needed to hold a vote.
These are the rules governing our democracy. They exist to protect the rights of the minority — but in an increasingly polarized environment, they are allowing one side or the other to grind government to a halt.
Drama worthy of the moment. Democrats are marshaling their arguments to put new pressure on Republicans and convince voters it’s all a threat to democracy.
The allegation that democracy is being put in danger is a grave one. It’s justified by Trump’s persistence in pushing the lie that he rally won the election and the growing acceptance among Republicans of the falsehood that he might be on to something. Their concerns about election security led directly to these voting restrictions in Texas, Arizona, Georgia and elsewhere.
Last resort. Rather than roll over and let the restrictive bill pass, Texas Democrats have fled the state to shut down the state legislature and block state Republicans’ second effort to pass legislation to restrict early voting and increase penalties for voting irregularities.
What’s next? They’ll need to evade Texas authorities until August 7 to wait out the special session. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, has vowed to arrest them upon their return to the state, detain them at the state capitol and call another session until the bills are passed.
Quorum math. Two-thirds of the chamber is required to achieve a quorum in Texas — that’s 67 members of the Texas House and 21 in the Texas state Senate.
When the Texas House gaveled in Tuesday morning, 57 of the 61 House Democrats were not in attendance, according to CNN’s Diane Gallagher.
The Texas state Senate did have a quorum with 22 members present. There were four Democrats on the floor when the Senate convened.
The Democrats’ scorched-earth maneuver brings all legislative business to a halt, a worthwhile effort, they say, to block the bill, although Abbott is exploring ways to arrest them upon their return.
This is not a new idea for Texas Democrats. Lawmakers in Austin also walked out earlier this year, delaying the same voting restriction effort back in May.
It arguably hands Texas Republicans a taste of the medicine Republicans in Congress are using in their own efforts to block Democrats’ voting bills.
Obstruction is more refined in Washington, where filibusters are presumed, rather than spoken, and managed like in a chess match between Democratic and Republican leaders.
Texas Democrats, meanwhile, flew in on chartered planes to upset the status quo and have set up shop as they wait out a special session and run out the clock on the voting bill.
Stalling tactic. The Texas Democrats hope their obstruction will help convince moderate Democrats to end the DC version of by-the-rules obstruction and change the rules to end a Republican-led filibuster of the national voting rights bill.
In DC, unlike Texas, a quorum is a bare majority in the US Senate, so nobody needs to flee the nation’s capital, as minorities have learned. The real magic number in the US Senate is two-fifths of the chamber — usually 40 senators — for a minority to block most legislation by refusing to limit debate, or invoke cloture. That’s exactly the rule national and Texas Democrats want to change. It’s been foiling their attempts to make American democracy a bit more democratic for decades.
But the Senate’s filibuster rule trumps a quorum. The campaign finance bill Packwood opposed failed because it couldn’t overcome a 60-vote threshold. Supporters forced eight cloture votes on the bill, culminating in Packwood’s staged collapse and Capitol Police carrying him onto the Senate floor.
The Supreme Court trumps them all. Justices threw out elements of the campaign finance bill that did ultimately pass 14 years later, in 2002, and was supposed to clean up American democracy. They’ve also whittled away at the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965, in a series of decisions. Democrats want to restore more national control over local elections.
They did it along conservative-liberal ideological lines, suggesting they’d be friendly to the Texas bill if Republicans there can round up enough Democrats to pass it. They also invalidated a California campaign finance rule that sought more disclosure in donations for charitable organizations, which could have major repercussions in campaign finance reform.
Ultimately, the only recourse for a new national voting standard is to get Republicans to agree to one (and give up some of their power) or to pass one without them.
One new idea offered by South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, a top Biden ally and the third-ranking Democrat in the House, is for Senate Democrats to carve out a filibuster exception for constitutional issues.
Clyburn’s idea is the slipperiest of slopes. Look how Democrats and Republicans have used a filibuster carve-out meant to keep the federal budget balanced in order to explode federal budget deficits with tax cuts (Republicans) and spending (Democrats).
Democrats may well try to end-run around the filibuster again to pass a massive infrastructure bill now that bipartisan talks are on the ropes.
They’ll need 100% of Democrats on board to do much of anything as a result. That includes Biden, who despite his forceful condemnation of Trump’s Big Lie Tuesday, failed to himself condemn the filibuster or call out the Democrats who oppose changing it by name, including Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.
As a longtime senator himself, he knows that passing legislation at the federal level will require some change in the calculus.