WASHINGTON — A key part of President Joe Biden’s legislative agenda is headed toward another defeat Wednesday, handing Democrats their second high-profile setback in as many months.
The Senate will hold a procedural vote Wednesday night to advance a pair of voting rights bills that Democrats say are critical to ensuring fair elections amid efforts in GOP-led states to erect new barriers to voting.
But while Senate Democrats unanimously support the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act, they will be unable to pass either without support from 10 Republicans — an insurmountable hurdle given GOP opposition.
Once the vote inevitably fails, Senate Democrats will pivot to an effort to change the 60-vote threshold into a so-called talking filibuster, which would require those in opposition to speak on the floor continuously to block legislation.
Democrats only need 51 votes to change the rules to adopt a talking filibuster, or even to scrap the 60-vote threshold altogether. But two moderate Democrats, Sens. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have said they would oppose filibuster reform.
Democratic leaders are pressing on.
“Make no mistake, win, lose or draw, members of this chamber were elected to debate and to vote, particularly on such an important issue as this,” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer said on the floor. “And win, lose or draw, we are going to vote. We are going to vote, especially when the issue relates to the beating heart of our democracy, as voting rights does.”
The vote is set to take place after Biden faces the White House press corps nearly one year into his administration.
Manchin’s opposition late last year to the president’s signature social spending and climate bill essentially killed that legislation, forcing Democrats to pivot to voting rights, only to see that, too, derailed by Manchin and Sinema’s commitment to keeping the filibuster intact.
Senate Democrats have said it’s important to hold the vote anyway to see where every member stands on voting rights and protecting democracy. In a rare bright spot for the Senate Democratic Caucus, Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona announced support for filibuster reform ahead of the vote. Kelly, a retired astronaut and veteran, is up for reelection this year.
“If NASA or the Navy functioned like the United States Senate, we would never get the rocket off the launchpad and in combat we’d never complete the mission,” Kelly said in a statement. “I’ve considered what rules changes would mean not just today, but years down the road, for both parties and all Arizonans. If campaign finance and voting rights reforms are blocked again this week, I will support the proposed changes to pass them with a majority vote.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., described what will occur on the floor Wednesday night as “a sad spectacle” and “a direct assault on the core identity of the Senate” by Schumer. He lamented that his Democratic colleagues aren’t focused on issues like inflation, the pandemic, rising homicides, the southern border and Russia’s flirtation with war.
“The administration and this Senate majority are focused on none of it,” McConnell said on the floor. “Instead, they’ve been consumed by a fake panic over election laws that seems to exist only in their imaginations.”
Though Democrats have said changing the filibuster is worth the risk of handing a future Republican majority a 51-vote threshold to pass its legislative priorities, GOP leaders have insisted their position to protect the filibuster won’t change based on whether they’re the party in power. They’ve highlighted the filibuster as a tool that prevents the Senate from operating like the House by fending off wild swings in policymaking and requiring compromise.
“That’s not an option for us,” Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Republican leader, said of filibuster reform. “If it were, we would’ve done it two years ago, four years ago, when we were getting the incessant pressure from the [Trump] administration to do it.”
