Technically, they don’t need 60. The cloture rule is what necessitates a 3/5ths supermajority to pass bills, but the cloture rule is not itself a law and so Senators can just… change it with a simple-majority vote. This has already happened twice in the recent past: once in 2013 when the Democrat-led Senate voted to eliminate the cloture rule when nominating federal circuit judges and once more in 2017 when the Ruplican-led Senate voted to eliminate the cloture rule when nominating supreme court justices.
FWIW: Senators tend to really hate doing this. They call it the “nuclear option” because they normally like to get a 2/3rds supermajority agreement before changing any standing Senate rules – not to mention that the cloture rule itself is often treated as a total third-rail even among the other important Senate procedures. Combining the nuclear option and killing cloture is a massive political powderkeg waiting to explode… but maybe it should?
I guess full throated fascism and authoritarianism isn’t enough to consider a “nuclear option.”
It’s a shared norm. Part of the deal is an implied promise that the other guys also ignore the big red button. Really, though… that ship had already sailed years ago leaving the cloture rule to hang on by the barest of threads. I’m half-convinced that the current Senate would have already done away with it if only they had a slightly more reliable voting margin.
IMO: cloture is a dumb rule because we already have a robust system of checks in the form of a bicameral legislature plus presidential veto. The requirement for a 2/3rd supermajority in addition to these for regular everyday business is odious and something that no other large democracy does. I’m anti-gridlock on principle alone, even if I acknowledge the absolute chaos it will probably plunge the Senate into for the next dozen years or so.
