NC Rep. Budd once called for end to Senate filibuster. He’s not ruling it out in the future.

In 2018, U.S. Rep. Ted Budd supported removing the Senate’s filibuster rules to ease passage of then-President Donald Trump’s agenda in the GOP-controlled chamber.

Today, with the procedural rule helping Republicans block President Joe Biden’s agenda in a Democratic-controlled Senate, Budd — who is running for U.S. Senate in North Carolina — is asking for prayers that the filibuster remains in place.

But in the future, if Republicans again hold the presidency and the Senate, Budd’s campaign won’t rule out him once again supporting the removal of the filibuster.

His campaign says it’s not a flip-flop or a change of position of the procedure, which requires a 60-vote threshold to reach a vote on most pieces of legislation.

“Ted’s top priority on anything being considered in the U.S. Senate will be the same as it was in 2018 or now: What is the best outcome for the working families of North Carolina?” Budd campaign senior advisor Jonathan Felts said this week in response to questions about Budd’s position in 2018 and now.

Budd, who has been endorsed by Trump, is one of several Republicans running for the nomination to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Richard Burr in 2022. The other top Republican contenders — former Gov. Pat McCrory and former U.S. Rep. Mark Walker — said in July they were opposed to ending the filibuster.

The top Democrats in the North Carolina Senate race have all expressed some willingness to at least tweak the rules around the filibuster.

Senate Republicans, led by leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, are fiercely opposed to changing the filibuster. McConnell resisted calls from Trump during his term in office to abolish it.

2018 arguments

Budd’s position on the filibuster was clear three years ago: Get rid of it.

And many of his arguments from the time sound similar to ones being made today by Democrats eager to scrap the filibuster in an evenly divided Senate.

“It’s really hurting America,” Budd said in a March 2018 audio interview on Breitbart News Sunday.

“They call it the nuclear option. I think that’s supposed to make people scared of it. But, you know, the nuclear option is just simply 51 votes or a simple majority. That sounds smart to me. I think we could get a lot more done that way.”

Budd, then part of a Republican majority in the House that was seeing its bills stalled in the other chamber, laid out several detailed arguments.

“You go back to the 17th Amendment and they moved from the governors appointing the senators to now (electing them) by popular majority in the states, but they still have this 60-vote rule? You know what, if you’re going to have a popular majority from the states sending senators here, then let the Senate itself move forward with a simple majority. I think that really makes sense,” Budd said.

The 17th Amendment, which provides for the direct election of U.S. Senators, was ratified in 1913.

The U.S. House does not have a similar mechanism to the filibuster, allowing for majority rule on all votes. The Senate, as Budd pointed out in those 2018 interviews, requires unanimity among its 100 members to do many things and a 60-vote threshold to move most legislation.

“The Senate is 100 yards away and lifetimes apart. I mean, it’s a different world at the other end of the chamber,” said Budd, who is in his third term in the House.

In another 2018 interview, Budd complained about the cost of trying to get Democratic votes to clear the 60-vote threshold. He called it an “unfortunate rule.”

“You’ve got to buy off the other side to get to 60 votes, which is a terrible rule, and it’s very expensive for the American people to buy off the left,” Budd said in an April 2018 interview on Breitbart News Daily.

“A lot of this comes back to that filibuster rule, it’s really time to get rid of that. We were sent to Congress to do something and it got very expensive and very unfortunate to get over the 60-vote rule. I think Trump is done with this. I’m done with this.”

Felts said in 2018 a lot of people, including Trump, were frustrated “and Ted gave voice to that displeasure.”

But now, with Democrats trying to push through legislation he opposes, Budd does not support getting rid of the filibuster, he once called “terrible.” In a March 2021 interview, he urged listeners to pray that conservative Democrats opposed to eliminating the filibuster “stay strong and protect this country.”

“They want to end the filibuster so that Vice President Kamala Harris can be the deciding vote on the Democratic plan to stack the Supreme Court with liberal, activist justices. Ted does not support that in any way, shape, or form,” Felts told The News & Observer in July.

Future fight over the filibuster

Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, wrote recently that he would not vote to change the filibuster rules in the future — even with unified Republican control.

“When Republicans eventually regain power, they can count me out of any effort to permanently destroy bipartisanship for the sake of scoring short-lived political gains, just as many of my colleagues and I refused to entertain the notion when Trump was in the White House,” Tillis wrote in July.

McCrory and Walker, Budd’s top Republican opponents in the 2022 Senate race, couched their opposition to eliminating the filibuster in historic terms, citing framers’ intent and protection for the Senate minority’s rights.

Would Budd support removal of the filibuster under a Republican president with a Republican majority in the Senate? His campaign would not rule it out.

“Candidates who prefer placating unelected bureaucrats over serving the people might prefer to focus on parliamentary procedure, but Ted’s focus is on what is the best outcome for the working families of N.C. And that focus is why we’re going to win,” Felts said.

Getting rid of the filibuster

Simply getting rid of the filibuster may not make the Senate work any better. The body often requires unanimous consent — that is, no objections — to move through its work in a timely fashion.

McConnell has promised to drastically slow down that work if the filibuster is removed with Democrats in charge. Biden, a former senator, is not in favor of removing the filibuster nor are the most conservative members of the Democrats’ 50-member caucus in the chamber.

Some business in the Senate can be conducted with a simply majority, including court nominations, presidential appointees and some bills dealing with the budget, but those budget bills must pass through an arduous process called reconciliation.

Trump’s 2017 package of tax cuts and President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan earlier this year were passed through reconciliation. Congressional Democrats are attempting to pass a 10-year, $3.5-billion spending package with provisions on climate, child care, education and health care through the process now.

The short-term lifting of the debt ceiling by the Senate on Thursday showed how the filibuster can play out. Without unanimous consent to move to a vote on the debt ceiling bill, Democrats needed the votes of at least 10 Republicans to clear the 60-vote threshold to end debate — called “cloture” — and move to a vote on the bill.

Eleven Republicans voted to end debate, allowing Democrats to then pass the bill to raise the debt ceiling in a 50-48 vote with all Republicans present voting no.