Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said his positions on the Byrd rule and filibuster are the same — there's no reason to change either.
Manchin, who previously said he will not vote to kill the filibuster, defended the Byrd rule, which prevents extraneous provisions from being added to a bill under the budget reconciliation process.
Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough is the nonpartisan official whose job it is to interpret which policies comply with the Byrd rule.
"The Byrd rule makes sure that legislation stays within its guardrails or its lanes, which is basically budget-related," Manchin told the the Washington Examiner during a Zoom call Wednesday.
The Byrd rule is named for former Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., whose seat Manchin holds.
"I will defend the Byrd rule the same way I defend the filibuster," Manchin said from his district office in Charleston, West Virginia. "I am not going to just set back and say, 'Oh, well, he really didn't mean it.' Sen. Byrd basically protected the institution, and that is how he protected it."
Manchin replaced Byrd in a special election after the longest-serving senator in history died at 92 in 2010.
Manchin said the Senate governs differently than the House, where if there are 218 yea votes for a bill, nobody cares about the 217 nays.
"You can shove it down their throat," he said. "That was not the intent and purpose of the Senate.
"We deliberate over the real hot topics that the House may send over to us because of whoever is control over there. They take a simple majority."