Sinema Tells Senate to Keep Filibuster in Farewell Speech

In her final speech on the Senate floor Wednesday, retiring Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., urged her colleagues to keep the filibuster.

"When holding political power and feeling the hunger and pressure for an immediate partisan win, it is easy to view the legislative filibuster as a weapon of obstruction," Sinema said. "It is tempting to prefer elimination of the filibuster to compromise.

"It certainly feels faster, easier, and more satisfying, at least in the short term that is. But there are dangers to choosing short-term victories over the hard and necessary work of building consensus."

She urged consensus.

"One-party rule is not democracy, that's autocracy. That's not the system our forefathers envisioned, and it's not what our country deserves. The beauty of America is in the push and the pull. Our democracy ensures that no one person, no one party, has too much control," Sinema continued.

"Surely I am not the only one to see the absurdity in all of this," Sinema said. "The political winds have now shifted, and yet the filibuster ensures … that the tyranny of the majority does not overrule the rights of the minority, regardless of who sits in the seat of power."

Fellow retiring Sen. Joe Manchin, I-W.Va., who, along with Sinema, switched from being a Democrat to an independent, also spoke against abandoning the filibuster in his farewell speech earlier this month: "I have worked, and I believe with every bone in my body, every fiber in me, and every ounce of blood that I have, to preserve the bipartisan foundation of the Senate, and that's the 60-vote threshold of the filibuster.

Each of these victories required senators to come together from both sides to find solutions. These were bills that just made common sense, and when each side could take a little step to find common ground, powerful things happen."

Sinema and Manchin had been steadfast in their opposition to many Senate Democrats' desires to nuke the filibuster during the Biden presidency.

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