Some reluctant Democrats consider ditching filibuster for voting bill despite grim pros... - 0 views
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politics US history crisis Culture policy GOP Angus-King Voting Tammy-Duckworth Illinois
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Some defenders of the Senate's filibuster rules are reconsidering their past refusal to gut the potent stall tactic if Republicans carry through with their plans to block Democratic legislation to rewrite the nation's voting and campaign finance laws.
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Democrats say they expect growing demands to change the filibuster rules later this month when the battle over voting rights heads to the Senate floor, hoping that the pressure will be enough to convince their party's most stalwart filibuster defender, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, to buckle and agree to gut the filibuster -- though he's showing no signs of caving.
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One of them: Sen. Angus King, a Maine independent who has been among the handful of members in the Senate Democratic Caucus to embrace overhauling Senate filibuster rules to let legislation advance by a simple majority of 51 senators.
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King is making clear that his view could indeed change if Republicans block the elections bill later this month, something he alluded to earlier this spring and made clear in an interview this week with CNN.
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"We have to defend democracy," King said. "And I'm afraid that our colleagues have put us in that position. I'm very reluctant to modify the filibuster. But I don't feel I can stand by and see our system subverted."
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Asked if he'd be open to backing the nuclear option -- a tactic to change Senate rules along straight party lines -- King said bluntly: "Yes."
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"We're still talking," Manchin told CNN last week, referring to his efforts to craft a bipartisan agreement on a narrower piece of legislation aimed at restoring a key aspect of the 1965 Voting Rights Act gutted by the Supreme Court eight years ago.
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"I am adamantly opposed to dividing our country any further on anything that basically, such as a major policy change as that, goes down partisan lines and could be very detrimental, I think, very harmful to our country," Manchin said when asked about changing the filibuster rules.
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"I spent 23 years defending people's rights to vote around the world so I'm gonna choose defending Americans rights to vote over 100 senators to mount a filibuster any day," Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois told CNN.
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Asked about Manchin's concerns that gutting the filibuster would effectively blow up the Senate, Duckworth said, "They're blowing up the right of Americans to vote all across the country."
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Some defenders of the Senate's filibuster rules are reconsidering their past refusal to gut the potent stall tactic if Republicans carry through with their plans to block Democratic legislation to rewrite the nation's voting and campaign finance laws.