President Joe Biden on Thursday conceded he doesn’t know how voting rights legislation will be passed without Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin on board but vowed ‘as long as I have breath in me’ he will fight.
‘I don’t know that we can get it done but I know one thing, as long as I have a breath in me, as long as I’m in the White House, as long as I’m engaged at all – I’m going to be fighting,’ he said.
Biden spent a little over an hour meeting with Senate Democrats on Capitol Hill but left without a clear path forward to pass a massive federal package of voting legislation, which would make Election Day a holiday, tighten campaign finance laws and adjust the redistricting process.
‘We missed this time,’ Biden conceded about Democratic efforts to fight laws passed in GOP-controlled states. ‘We missed this time, and the state legislative bodies continue to change the law, it’s not about who can vote, but who gets to count the vote.’
His voice grew louder as he repeated his phrase: ‘Count the vote. Count the vote. It’s about election subversion, not just whether or not people get to vote.
Biden made the personal appearance to lobby Democrats on voting rights legislation but his plea may come in vain after Simena made it clear she will not support his call to kill the filibuster.
‘It is clear that the two parties strategies are not working, not for either side and especially not for the country,’ Sinema said in a 19-minute speech on the Senate floor before the meeting with Biden.
Her decision essentially killed Democratic efforts to pass voting legislation – despite a procedural gamble from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the heavy lobbying from Biden and an impassioned plea from Barack Obama.
Republicans praised her for saving the Senate.
Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, who also opposes killing the filibuster, said Biden gave an ‘very passionate, very good speech’ but wouldn’t say whether or not his mind had been changed.
‘The president gave an extremely, very passionate, very good speech. It was very human. It was very touching. It was very good. It was very historical,’ the senator from West Virginia said.
But Biden apparently didn’t win him over. After the meeting, Manchin released a lengthy statement on why he would not vote to kill the filibuster.
‘I will not vote to eliminate or weaken the filibuster,’ he said. ‘The filibuster plays an important role in protecting our democracy from the transitory passions of the majority and respecting the input of the minority in the Senate.’
‘Ending the filibuster would be the easy way out. I cannot support such a perilous course for this nation when elected leaders are sent to Washington to unite our country by putting politics and party aside. It is time we do the hard work to forge the difficult compromises that can stand the test of time and deliver on the promise of a brighter tomorrow for all Americans,’ he said.
In the closed-door meeting, Biden spoke for about 15 minutes and then took questions, including some from Manchin, according to Democratic Senator Tim Kaine.
‘At least 15 senators, asked questions or spoken, engaged and back and forth,’ Kaine said.
Schumer, after the meeting, praised Biden for coming but declined to say what the next steps are. He needs all 50 Democratic senators on board to proceed. With Sinema and Manchin staying at a ‘no’ on killing the filibuster and Senator Brian Schatz quarantining after testing postitive for COVID, Schumer is down to 47 votes.
President Joe Biden conceded he doesn’t know how voting rights legislation will be passed but vowed ‘as long as I have breath in me’ he will fight
President Joe Biden leaves Capitol Hill after his meeting with Senate Democrats – and without a clear path forward on voting rights legislation
President Biden speaks to reporters after his meeting with Senate Democrats
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer declined to talk about next steps on voting rights legislation
The tone and stage for Biden’s meeting was set about an hour before his arrival on Capitol Hill when Sinema took to the Senate floor to give a defiant speech that praised the power of the filibuster.
Manchin described her remarks as ‘excellent.’
‘Very good. Excellent speech,’ he told reporters on Capitol Hill
And Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said Sinema ‘saved’ the Senate and called her speech an act ‘conspicuous of political courage.’
‘She saved the Senate as an institution,’ he said.
Schumer didn’t comment on Sinema. But Dick Durbin, the number two in Senate Democratic leadership, said he was ‘disappointed but not surprised’ in Sinema.
In her remarks, Sinema decried the divisive politics in the nation and said it has led to anger among lawmakers and their constituents alike. She called on the Senate to work together on bipartisan legislation that both parties can support.
‘Our mandate, it seems, evident to me: work together and get stuff done for America,’ Sinema said in her speech on the Senate floor.
‘We must address the disease itself, the disease of division, to protect our democracy, and it cannot be achieved by one party alone,’ she said. ‘The response requires something greater and, yes, more difficult than what the Senate is discussing today.’
She said, given the even 50-50 split in the Senate, Democrats need to get buy in from Republicans to pass legislation.
‘When one party needs to only negotiate with itself, policy will inextricably be pushed from the middle towards the extremes,’ she said.
She called the filibuster a ‘guardrail’ that protects the political center, which ‘ensures that millions of Americans, represented by the minority party have a voice in the process.’
‘The steady escalation of tip for tat, in which each new majority weakens the guardrails of the Senate and excludes input from the other party, furthering resentment and anger, amongst this body, and our constituents at home,’ she said.
She made it clear she supports the voting rights legislation that Democrats are pushing but not at the expense of killing the filibuster.
‘Eliminating the 60 vote threshold on a party line with the thinnest of possible majorities to pass these bills that I support will not guarantee that we prevent demagogues from winning office. Indeed, some who undermine the principles of democracy have already been elected. Rather, eliminating the 60 vote threshold will simply guarantee that we lose a critical tool that we need to safeguard our democracy from threats in the years to come,’ she said.
She called for lawmakers to ‘lower the political temperature and to seek lasting solutions.’
Her remarks came after the House passed a voting rights bill on Thursday and sent it to the Senate as part of a procedural gambit to allow Schumer to bypass a Republican fillibuster in order to start debate on the legislation.
The House passed the measure 220-203 party-line vote. The move buys time as Schumer and other Democratic leaders try to persuade Machin and Sinema to join them in changing Senate rules to kill the filibuster on the voting legislation.
Schumer’s gamble may not have paid off anyway, as he ultimately need 10 GOP senators in his corner to bring the bill up for final passage, which requires 60 votes.
Republicans are united in their opposition, arguing elections should be run on the state level instead of on a national one.
Schumer, in a memo to lawmakers on Wednesday, outlined his plan to get voting legislation signed into law.
To manuever around Senate Republican opposition, the House brought up an unrelated NASA bill. In place of the NASA language, the House swapped in the combined text of the two voting bills being held up in the Senate: the Freedom to Vote Act and John Lewis Voting Rights bill.
After it passed the Democratic-controlled chamber, Speaker Nancy Pelosi shipped it to the Senate as a ‘message’ from the House.
Because it will be categorized as a ‘message between the houses,’ Schumer can skip the 60-vote threshold needed to start debate, allowing him to bypass Republicans’ vow to filibuster.
That will allow debate to begin on the legislation.
‘Then the Senate will finally hold a debate on voting rights legislation for the first time in this Congress, and every Senator will be faced with a choice of whether or not to pass this legislation to protect our democracy,’ Schumer said on the Senate floor on Thursday.
However, it doesn’t guarantee the legislation will get passed. When debate on the bill concludes, Schumer will still need 60 votes to file cloture to end debate on the bill – that means he needs 10 GOP senators on board.
Republicans can use their filibuster power then to stop the legislation its tracks.
At that point, Schumer will have to decide whether to invoke the ‘nuclear option’ – which is to change the Senate rules to have the bill proceed with a simple majority instead of 60 votes.
If he goes nuclear, that is when he needs all 50 Democrats to support it in the evenly-divided Senate. Harris would act as the tie breaker.
He has indicated that is what he will do.
‘Of course, to ultimately end debate and pass anything, we will also need 10 Republicans to join us ultimately on cloture,’ Schumer said on Thursday.
‘If they don’t, we will be left with no choice but to consider changes to Senate rules so we can move forward, and changing Senate rules has been done many times before in this chamber. This is not the first, second or third time that this is happening,’ he added. ‘All of us must make a choice about whether or not we will do our part to preserve our democratic republic in this day and age.’
President Joe Biden walked into his meeting room with Senate Democrats
Democratic Senator Kyrsten Simena made it clear on Thursday she will not support a call from her party leaders to kill the filibuster in order to pass voting rights legislation
Senator Joe Manchin described Senator Sinema’s speech as ‘excellent’ – Manchin also supports keeping the filibuster
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said Sinema ‘saved’ the Senate
The House passed a voting rights bill on Thursday and sent it to the Senate
Manchin has said several times he is willing to change the Senate rules but only with Republican support. Democratic senators have been meeting with both him and Sinema this week in an effort to get their two colleagues on board.
And Harris went after the two senators in an interview with NBC News.
‘I don’t think anyone should be absolved from the responsibility of preserving and protecting our democracy, especially when they took an oath to protect and defend our Constitution,’ she said.
Schumer has said repeatedly he wants voting legislation passed by January 17th, Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
The Senate Majority Leader also has warned senators they may have to stay in Washington D.C. for the weekend, and some are expecting the vote to take place on Monday – the federal holiday.
The pressure campaign head of Thursday’s Capitol Hill meeting was heavy.
Barack Obama, in an op-ed published in USA Today, wrote that the Senate filibuster ‘has no basis in the Constitution’ and argued it was used by Southern senators to block civil rights legislation that disinfranchised black voters.
‘I fully support President Joe Biden’s call to modify Senate rules as necessary to make sure pending voting rights legislation gets called for a vote,’ Obama wrote.
‘In recent years, the filibuster became a routine way for the Senate minority to to block important progress on issues supported by the majority of voters. But we can’t allow it to be used to block efforts to protect our democracy,’ he noted.
Barack Obama joined the campaign to pressure Democratic senators into supporting voting rights legislation, backing Joe Biden’s demand to kill the Senate filibuster
In his op-ed, Obama invoked the words of legendary civil rights leader John Lewis, for whom one of the voting bill is named.
And he warned of legislation being passed in Republican-controlled states that could hurt Democrats at the ballot box this November, when voters will decide which party controls the House and Senate.
‘What we’re seeing now are far more aggressive and precise efforts on the part of Republican state legislatures to tilt the playing field in their favor,’ Obama wrote.
‘Perhaps most perniciously, we’ve seen state legislatures try to assert power over core election processes including the ability to certify election results. These partisan attempts at voter nullification are unlike anything we’ve seen in modern times, and they represent a profound threat to the basic democratic principle that all votes should be counted fairly and objectively,’ he added.
His support comes after Biden went to Atlanta where he attacked Republicans for not supporting the voting legislation and called for the change in Senate rules to get it passed.
‘The threat to our democracy is so grave, we must find a way to pass these voting rights bills, debate them, vote,’ Biden said in his speech. ‘Let the majority prevail.’
Republicans ratched up the rhetoric on Wednesday in response to Biden’s own fiery address, where he accused the GOP of standing on the wrong side of history when it came to voting rights.
‘The president’s rant – rant – yesterday was incorrect, incoherent, and beneath his office,’ Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said in his remarks on the Senate floor, calling Biden’s speech ‘profoundly, profoundly unpresidential.’
In response, Biden tried to meet with McConnell when he was at the Capitol on Wednesday to pay his respects to the late Senate leader Harry Reid, whose remains were lying in state in the Capitol rotunda.
The two men did not connnect, however.
Biden seemed to shrug off the attacks.
‘I like Mitch McConnell. He’s a friend,’ he told reporters in the Capitol when asked about what McConnell remarks.
The war of words comes as both sides prepare for this November’s midterm election, which will determine what political party controls the House and Senate next year. The battle centers on voting rights legislation that Democrats want to pass, saying it will protect the right vote, and Republicans roundly oppose, saying elections are state issues.
Biden made the case for Democrats in a speech in Atlanta on Tuesday, which led to the Senate Republican leader’s response.
Biden ‘delivered a deliberately divisive speech,’ McConnell charged. ‘It was designed to pull our country further apart.’
McConnell blasted Biden for comparing those who opposed federal voting laws ‘to literal traitors’ and said he was demonizing ‘Americans who disagreed with him.’
‘He called millions of Americans his domestic enemies,’ the GOP leader charged.
‘Look I’ve known liked and personally respected Joe Biden for many years. I did not recognize the man at the podium yesterday,’ he noted.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell tore into President Joe Biden, calling his Atlanta speech ‘incorrect, incoherent, and beneath his office’
In his speech in Atlanta on Tuesday, President Joe Biden repeatedly attacked Republicans for blocking voting rights legislation and accused them of weaponizing the filibuster
In his speech in Atlanta on Tuesday, Biden repeatedly attacked Republicans for blocking voting rights legislation and accused them of weaponizing the filibuster.
‘The filibuster is not used by Republicans to bring the Senate together but to pull it further apart,’ he said. ‘The filibuster has been weaponized and abused.’
And Biden framed the debate as a political choice – to support or divide the country.
‘Do you want to be on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?,’ Biden asked.
‘This is the moment to decide to defend our elections, to defend our democracy,’ he said, adding ‘Each one of the members of the Senate is going to be judged by history on where they stood before the vote and where they stood after the vote.’
But as Biden makes the case against the filibuster, Republicans argue for it, warning killing it to make an exception for voting rights legislation could lead to it being killed for other issues, diminishing its power.
The loss of the filibuster’s power is behind Manchin’s and Sinema’s hesitiation in voting to kill it.