Senate confrontation looms on voting rights, filibuster
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer prepared Democrats on Wednesday for the final phase of a yearlong push to pass voting rights legislation, sketching out legislative maneuvers that could launch debate on two stalled bills and force a confrontation over the Senate’s rules in the coming days.
The details of the next steps, laid out in a memo that Schumer, D-N.Y., sent to colleagues Wednesday afternoon, comes as President Joe Biden has launched his own aggressive push to persuade his fellow Democrats to band together and overhaul the filibuster — the longstanding Senate rule requiring a 60-vote supermajority — to overcome GOP opposition to voting rights bills.
Biden made that case publicly in an address he delivered in Atlanta on Tuesday, when he said the Senate “has been rendered a shell of its former self ” and compared the present Republican opposition to the blockades mounted against civil rights bills in the Jim Crow era. He’s scheduled to visit a Senate Democratic lunch Thursday to press his case directly with lawmakers.
In the memo, Schumer announced his intention to use existing rules to jump-start debate on the voting bills by having the House amend an existing, unrelated bill dealing with NASA and sending it back to the Senate. Starting debate under those circumstances requires only a simple majority of 51 votes — not a 60vote supermajority.
But the maneuver doesn’t affect the 60-vote requirement for ending debate and moving to final passage of the Democratic bills. With at least two Democratic senators signaling that they aren’t willing to erode that provision, Schumer’s plan would set up a final confrontation when and if a motion to close debate is blocked. At that point, Schumer or another Democrat could move to establish a new 51-vote precedent, subject to a simple majority vote.
Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.VA., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-ariz., have defended the 60-vote margin for protecting minority rights and encouraging bipartisanship even as dozens of their colleagues have switched their own views on the filibuster in recent months. Manchin said several times this week that he’s willing to change the rules only with bipartisan support.
But Manchin and Sinema have continued to meet with Democratic colleagues who have sought to change their minds. Schumer previously said the Senate would vote on a possible rules change no later than Monday — the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday — and a senior Democratic aide said Wednesday that pledge remains in effect.
Speaking on MSNBC on Wednesday morning, Schumer acknowledged that the two centrists remained a significant obstacle.
“Do I want people to think we’re almost there? No. It’s an uphill fight,” he said on “Morning Joe.” “But Manchin and Sinema are talking to us, and we are going to hope to get this done. It is too important to drop.”