President Trump made sure another week didn't pass without attacking his own party again. At the end of the first week that Congress returned back to Washington, the President took to Twitter to once again demand that congressional Republicans did away with the filibuster.

Chipping away at filibuster

The filibuster is a tactic that lawmakers use to stall legislation often from the opposition.

Since Donald Trump has been in office, his determination to force Congress to do away with Obamacare -- formally referred to as the Affordable Care Act -- has caused him to come face-to-face with the legislative process whether he wanted to or not.

After repeated failures to replace and even repeal the ACA, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell publicly criticized the President for not wanting to learn how Congress works. And still, it hasn't forced Trump away him from his goal to kill the filibuster rule.

The President's demand to do away with the filibuster was recently made to push for tax reform he wants to complete before the end of the year. but McConnell has repeatedly pushed back saying it was unnecessary or implying that that wasn't the way to legislate.

One reason for Trump's persistence is due to the fact using the filibuster rule is due to expire by the end of September. After that, Republicans will have to redo reconciliation to establish simple majority requirement.

Under budgetary reconciliation requirements for passing bills, Republicans have changed from a 60 vote requirement to a simple majority, giving them a better chance of passing their bills.

But, as mentioned with the ACA, even that effort failed multiple times. The differences between the House of Representatives and the Senate is that while Republicans have the majority in both, Democrats have a little more sway in the Senate.

Pushback from the GOP

In fact, this is why Trump wants Senate Republicans to get rid of the filibuster rules because Democrats would be able to use it as they've already done throughout the year.

Trump's tweet attacking the filibuster follows the President siding with Democrats for a plan to fund the government for another three-months and funding disaster from Hurricane Harvey. With President Trump hammering away at Republicans in Congress it has so far only resulted in some divisions and frustrated the GOP to the point where their leadership had reportedly been talking about legislating without the White House.

As far as tax reform is concerned, Republicans in the House of Representatives are said to be doing the White House's work of putting a tax bill together, without any input from Democrats. Also, given McConnell's reputation for holding out for long periods of time, exhausting his opponent -- as he did with former President Obama; if McConnell says that he's not going to do away with the filibuster, it's already seen as pointless for the President to keep demanding it. Nonetheless, Trump declared that by not doing so, the Republicans are giving themselves a "death sentence."
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