“I’m not here to provide a whip count for all of you, but that’s not where support currently stands. So the president’s view continues to be aligned with what he has said in the past, which is that he has not supported the elimination of the filibuster because it has been used as often the other way around,” Psaki said.

The press secretary added that the White House had no new positions on any filibuster exceptions. In reality, any effort to narrowly tailor an exception to the legislative filibuster could be fraught, and potentially unworkable.

For instance, a bid to eliminate the 60-vote requirement for constitutional policy questions like voting rights could also apply to a host of other topics, from clear issues of constitutional significance like gun rights and abortion to the tax code, since the power of Congress to levy taxes is itself within the Constitution.

“He’s talked about his support for returning to the talking filibuster. He continues to support that,” Psaki said. “But he, again, believes that, as somebody who was in the Senate for 36 years, we need to continue to work to find a path forward to do hard things, even when they seem challenging, and that’s what he will do in this case.”