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My colleague also mistakenly suggests that Senate Republicans would have to vote to enforce the talking filibuster. That simply isn’t true; no vote is required for this step. All we need is a majority leader willing to announce that we’re getting on the bill and that we will continue to debate it until it passes—all with the understanding that if filibustering senators fail to show up to debate it, we can “call the question” and pass it with a simple majority.
That understanding, in turn, is what motivates the filibustering senators to show up and speak, but it’s also what naturally causes them to tire of the exercise after a few weeks, at which point they start looking for a face-saving off-ramp.
Finally, Leader Thune suggests that the talking filibuster would be thwarted by being “reset” every time Democrats offered an amendment. There’s a valid point in there, but it’s not a good reason not to invoke the talking filibuster. It appears he’s referring indirectly to paragraph 1(a) of Senate Rule 19 (the two-speech rule). While offering a new amendment can create a new question under longstanding practice, the September 25, 1986 precedent narrowed how rigidly the two-speech rule is applied by clarifying that many procedural actions do not count as speeches at all.
Particularly in light of that 1986 clarification, it’s been a long time since I’ve suggested we consider rigid enforcement of Rule 19’s two-speech limit as part of a talking filibuster strategy for the SAVE America Act. We don’t need it!
Nor was that rule aggressively enforced during the Senate’s consideration of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Majority Leader Mike Mansfield correctly focused on requiring actual debate from filibustering senators rather than looking for technical ways to shut the debate down.
To give credit where it’s due, I appreciate what Leader Thune said in this interview about the possibility of passing some iteration of SAVE America using budget reconciliation—a procedure in which there is no 60-vote cloture hurdle. I’ve been skeptical of this approach in the past, but I’m starting to believe the SAVE America Act has more budgetary features than I initially considered possible.
That said, reconciliation is fraught with all kinds of problems, challenges, risks, and uncertainties. Also, failure can be far too easy to blame on the parliamentarian.
I’m open to considering the reconciliation path, but we should make this decision with our eyes open. To do that, we need to separate fact from fiction when it comes to the talking filibuster.
https://x.com/BasedMikeLee/status/2081959495639392347

Mike Lee @BasedMikeLee - Like the SAVE America Act itself, voting on whether to take a lengthy August recess—especially while an increasingly dark cloud of uncertainty hangs over our election security—shouldn’t be controversial.
Not at all.
To most people, these things are just common sense.
Quoted Post:
The Hill @thehill - Some GOP senators say they will vote to cancel recess over SAVE America Act https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5991717-senate-republicans-save-america-act-recess-mike-lee/
https://x.com/BasedMikeLee/status/2081926550413283547