photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kansas, is pictured at the University of Kansas on Nov. 7, 2024.

After Tuesday’s election results, all eyes are on President-elect Donald Trump, but Kansas’ senior Republican senator urged those who are nervous about the next four years to place some faith in Congress.

“What I hope to see is a Congress that does its job,” U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kansas, said in a brief interview with the Journal-World on Wednesday.

Moran said Congress has been too lax in the past on asserting its checks and balances on the presidency. He said he hopes that changes as a new Congress is seated.

“One of the things that is really important to me — and it is a check and a balance — is that over a long period of time, Congress has allowed the executive branch to exceed the authorities of the executive branch, and it is time for Congress to reassert,” Moran said. “It is past time — it was time in the Biden administration, it was time in the Trump administration, it was time in the Obama administration — for us to regain the authority that the framers of our country provided in the Constitution.”

But Moran didn’t address how that will happen, given that it hasn’t occurred with the past several administrations. The latest results have created the prospect that Republicans will control the presidency, the Senate and the House. The results have handed power to Republicans in the first two, and vote counting is still underway to determine if Republicans will maintain control of the House.

If Republicans control all three institutions, questions likely will emerge of whether Republicans will seek to end the 60-vote rule, also known as a filibuster. Democrats in the last Congress came close to jettisoning the rule to pass voting rights legislation, but enough Democrats — senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema — sided with Republicans to preserve the rule.

But now the shoe may be on the other foot, with Republicans open to changing the rule, believing that they have a window of opportunity to push through conservative initiatives while they control both houses of Congress and the White House. Trump has previously called on Republicans to end the filibuster, and one of the rule’s chief defenders — Sen. Mitch McConnell — is stepping down from his powerful role as Republican leader of the Senate.

Moran said he still strongly supports the rule and the need for 60 votes to approve most legislation.

“It takes 60 votes to accomplish things in the Senate, and that is is a good check and balance even within the Senate, and generally protects people who come from small states like I do,” Moran said, noting there has never been 60 Republican senators in the history of the country.

But Moran was less definitive on whether his colleagues will feel the same way. It takes only 51 votes in the Senate to suspend the rule. Both Manchin and Sinema — filibuster defenders — are leaving Congress. Moran said he is hoping for consistency from his fellow Republicans who have supported the filibuster rule in the past.

“What I hope is that people who were opposed to changing the rule under the Biden administration are still opposed to changing it under the Trump administration,” Moran said.

It is not hard to see how there will be pressure on Republicans to change the rule, however, if that is all that is standing in between them and a major legislative victory. Voters are expecting results, Moran said. He said that was one of the key takeaways he had from Tuesday’s outcome.

“I think what mostly was said is that Americans generally were looking for something different than the last four years,” Moran said of the election outcome. “The challenges we face still remain: inflation, economic opportunity, energy independence, crisis at the border. It was a message that we want to see results. It puts a lot of onus on a new administration and new Congress to get those results.”