What if the referee of the Super Bowl walked out on the field wearing a Tampa Bay jersey and Tom Brady was allowed to throw a flag on the Kansas City defense? Andy Reid and Chiefs fans everywhere would be justifiably outraged.
But there’s little outrage as one D.C. team prepares to rewrite the rules of the game in the first quarter — and it’s not the Washington Football Team.
After November’s election, Democrats are up by just one player in the Senate and a few moderates away from a tie in the House. Normally that would require bipartisanship and force Congress to be more polite than a football team to get anything done, but the Left has decided to play dirty and rewrite the rules from the field.
Their first try was the “nuclear option” to remove the legislative filibuster, a 200-year-old Senate procedure which effectively requires 60 votes to pass any major legislation. After public outcry and two Democratic defections, the rule stayed put — though the Left is still eyeing it.
Instead, they came up with a new plan to reach the same goal of passing whatever they want with 51 votes: ignore the rules of the game entirely.
The Left hopes to do this through the budget reconciliation process, which allows the Senate to alter budget, tax and spending levels with a simple majority vote — avoiding a filibuster. But there are limits. Senator Robert Byrd saw the potential for abusing reconciliation early on, and the Senate passed the Byrd rule in 1985. The Byrd rule prevents Senators from using reconciliation as a vehicle for extraneous policies or ones that increase long-term deficits — items like tax cuts are eligible, but not immigration measures, for example.
Since partisan, harmful items like the Green New Deal, Medicare for All and a $15 minimum wage are extraneous, they can’t be passed with 51 votes through reconciliation. That’s why the Left is preparing to simply bypass the Byrd rule. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ staff director for the Budget Committee has written that the vice president can simply ignore the Byrd rule to pass Medicare for All with 51 votes — that’s like a head coach reversing a penalty himself.
After changing the rules of the Senate to get a legislative first down, the left wing in both houses will try to rewrite the whole rulebook by changing election laws to favor their own team. H.R. 1, the misleadingly titled “For the People Act,” would assert federal control over state elections, destroy state voter ID laws and violate the Constitution by taking away states’ abilities to draw congressional districts and bar felons from voting.
Similarly, the “John Lewis Voting Rights Act” would favor Democrats in the elections by requiring certain jurisdictions (mostly Republican) to obtain clearance from the Department of Justice for any redistricting — a demand other districts aren’t subject to. This would preserve unfair electoral maps, using civil rights and minority communities as a pretext to keep power for decades.
If throwing out the rules of the Senate and state election systems wasn’t enough, the Left is already working to expand their voting base for 2024 and beyond. Joe Biden’s U.S. Citizenship Act would give amnesty to nearly every one of the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants in eight years. One feature of the bill has received less attention: it would give over one million illegal immigrants the right to vote by the 2024 election. Recipients of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), as well as farmworkers, would be eligible for green cards immediately and for citizenship in three years. That means an expanded voter pool, which Democrats believe would largely vote for them. After eight years, the left could expand their voting margin by millions. It’s a cynical ploy to gain political power under the pretense of open-mindedness.
After changing the rules of Congress to favor their party and rigging the electoral map, the Left will work to pass their policies quickly, with no Republican votes, and with little electoral consequence. They know Americans don’t want to defund the police, kill the nation’s energy industry, or open the border, and they know they couldn’t pass these radical policies on a level playing field. But with a razor-thin majority, they are working to rewrite the rules of the game.
The future hasn’t been written, of course. That’s why it’s now up to Americans to pay close attention to the next hundred days in Congress and fight back against unfair power grabs from the left. Otherwise, if they get their way, it may be too late.
Garrett Bess is Vice President of Government Relations and Communications of Heritage Action for America