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Bessent demands Senate GOP nuke filibuster for voter ID bill: ‘The prisoner’s dilemma…kill or be killed!’

February 14, 2026 | | Print Article

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent turned to a specific game theory in support of passage of the president’s key policies: “It’s kind of kill or be killed.”

Amid obstruction and lawfare from Democrat lawmakers and their leftist allies, Republican voters have been left wanting while control of the House, Senate and White House hasn’t amounted to sweeping reforms to force back the Overton Window. Now, with an opportunity in sight to shore up election integrity, Bessent raised the prisoner’s dilemma in calling for nuking the filibuster.

Appearing with CNBC co-host Joe Kernen on “Squawk Box,” the cabinet official addressed the importance of the SAVE America Act, aimed at requiring voter ID and putting an end to non-essential mail-in ballots, as he insisted the likely next step from Democrats demanded Republican action now.

“If you have bad actors in the prisoner’s dilemma, which the Democrats are, then you should move first. It’s kind of kill or be killed,” asserted Bessent as he used the example of how the Democrat majority operated when faced with internal opposition from then-Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. The party had “basically nuked the filibuster,” and the refusal to “go along with it” found the two lawmakers out of Congress.

“I think the Republicans need to be smart about this … Maybe the filibuster doesn’t get withdrawn for everything, but there are things that we’ve got to do, like voter integrity, and we’ve got to keep the government open,” continued the secretary as, only months after the Democrats’ record-breaking shutdown tied to entitlements for illegal aliens, the GOP was being threatened with another shutdown to obstruct President Donald Trump’s agenda.

“I mean, look, we are on the verge of another government shutdown, and the Democrats think this is the way to hurt President Trump, but they’re willing to hurt the American people,” said Bessent during the lengthy interview that had touched on a range of topics, including artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency. “We had the biggest or the longest shutdown in history. The economy still did great because all the initiatives we put forward, but I think that we have to get on with the people’s business.”

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“And if the Democrats shut the economy down again, it is a sign that they are bad actors, they don’t care about the American people, and we ought to move forward, not let the government shut down, have voter integrity, and many other of our signature issues,” he concluded on that point.

Efforts to whip the Republican senators in favor of the SAVE America Act had proven sufficient to advance utilizing Vice President J.D. Vance as a tie-breaking vote after Maine Sen. Susan Collins had signaled her support on Friday. What remained, as Utah Sen. Mike Lee (R) articulated, was to convince the Senate GOP to return to the talking filibuster, doing away with the so-called zombie filibuster, so that the bill may have a path for passage in the upper chamber rather than being dead on arrival.

Kevin Haggerty
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