Democratic Senator Kyrsten Simena made it clear on Thursday she will not support a call from her party leaders to kill the filibuster in o...
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.
‘It is clear that the two parties strategies are not working, not for either side and especially not for the country,’ she said in a 19-minute speech on the Senate floor.
Her decision essentially killed Democratic efforts to pass voting legislation – despite a procedural gamble from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, heavy lobbying from President Joe Biden and an impassioned plea from Barack Obama.
The senator from Arizona offered an impassioned defense of the filibuster ahead of President Biden’s visit to Capitol Hill to try and persuade her and fellow Democratic Senator Joe Manchin to join his call to kill that legislative tactic.
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.'
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
She said if 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.
The pressure campaign on the two is on: President Joe Biden heads to Capitol Hill in the afternoon to meet with Democrats in person, Vice President Kamala Harris called them out in an interview on NBC News, and Barack Obama wrote an op-ed in USA Today, calling the filibuster a tool to 'prop up Jim Crow.'
But Sinema appears to have made it all for not, stating her firm resolve on the issue.
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.
The House passed a voting rights bill on Thursday and sent it to the Senate
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is plotting a procedural gambit to bypass Republican opposition to start debate on voting legislation
President Biden will go to Capitol Hill on Thursday to meet with Democrats where he will try to persuade Senator Joe Manchin to back killing the filibuster
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.'
Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema oppose efforts to kill the filibuster and there is a heavy lobbying campaign by Democratic leaders and their Senate colleagues to get them on board
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