Tina Smith

Maybe I differ from both of my colleagues here.

I think that the Senate rules have so completely stymied the ability of the Senate to do anything.

And I'm not just talking about the filibuster.

I think there's got to be a way of figuring out how to make the systems of the Senate work better.

Because you'd like to get...

Get rid of the filibuster.

I mean, I would at least like to reform it so that if you're going to filibuster a bill, you ought to at least have to stand on the damn floor and talk.

And we're exactly alike on that.

Instead of just saying, oh, I don't like this, so I'm going to object and then go out for dinner.

I've watched the Senate for the last eight years, and I have not seen that the filibuster is the pill to cure partisanship.

What I see is that partisanship is—I mean, sometimes, certainly, the need to find a 60-vote majority creates strong pieces of legislation like the Infrastructure and Jobs Act.

But sometimes it creates the very systems that make it very difficult for the things that Americans want to get done to actually get done.

Well, so I'm

In a functioning legislative body, you would think that the Democratic leader and the Republican leader would talk to each other all the time, right, to try to figure things out, try to get things going.

The level of partisanship in the Senate is at such a degree that it just doesn't happen anymore.

The informal group that I am a part of, it's a group of senators who have been complaining and unhappy primarily with the ways in which the leader has been identifying what candidates he wants to run in what states.

It has been primarily about that kind of like how the elections work.

Yes, I think it does.

To be clear, I haven't endorsed anybody in Maine, but I haven't endorsed anybody in Minnesota yet either because I think that it should be up to the voters to decide.

Okay.