One of Washington’s most powerful Democrats has issued a candid warning to members of his own party, saying they need to find a way to pass important voting rights legislation or lose control of Congress.
The comments of Jim Clyburn, the whip of the majority of the House, came days after the House of Representatives passed a bill on voting rights that enacted some of the most dramatic extensions of the right to vote since the Voting Rights Act of 1965. While Democrats also control the U.S. Senate, the bill is unlikely to pass the House because of a procedural rule, the filibuster, which requires 60 votes to vote. advance legislation.
In an interview with The Guardian this week, Clyburn convened two moderate Democratic senators, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who have opposed getting rid of the filibuster. Republicans across the country are pushing for widespread measures to reduce voting rights and let die expansive voting rights legislation would hurt Democrats, Clyburn said.
“There is no way under the sun that in 2021 will allow the filibuster to be used to deny voting rights. That will not happen. That would be catastrophic,” he said. “If Manchin and Sinema enjoy a majority, it’s best that they figure out a way to circumvent the filibuster when it comes to voting and civil rights.”
Clyburn issued this warning earlier the 56th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, 1965, when police officers brutally beat voting rights activists in Selma, Alabama.
Clyburn and other House Democrats have been waiting for the early days of the Joe Biden administration to be marked by the passage of a bill named after Georgia’s late Congressman John Lewis, a civil rights hero. almost murdered on Bloody Sunday. This measure would reinstate a key provision in the Voting Rights Act, repealed by the Supreme Court in 2013, which required places with a history of voting discrimination to receive electoral changes authorized by the federal government before they came into force.
“Here we are talking about the Voting Rights Act for which you worked so hard and for which it is said in your honor and will you be filibustered to death? That will not happen,” Clyburn said.
But the likelihood of this bill becoming law is questionable under current procedures. Democrats hope Republicans find a reason to favor it after its long-awaited passage through the House of Representatives and consideration in the Senate. Therefore, Clyburn calls for some sort of solution to the filibuster in the current legislative climate, in which the Senate is divided between 50 and 50 and the use of the legislative obstruction mechanism is too common.
“I will not say that you have to get rid of the filibuster. I would say it would be good to develop a Manchin-Cinema rule to avoid filibustering in relation to race and civil rights, ”Clyburn said.
Clyburn said he has not discussed changing the filibuster with Biden, who has expressed support for keeping the filibuster in place.
The reality of its meager majority and the regularity of legislation being extended due to filibustering has led Democrats to choose to approve the Biden administration’s Covid aid package through a budget process called reconciliation, which does not is subject to the filibuster-proof 60-vote threshold. Clyburn wants to see the same with civil rights.
“You can’t cut the budget,” Clyburn said. “That’s why we have conciliation rules. We must have a civil and voting rights conciliation. That should have allowed reconciliation a long, long time ago. “
He noted, “If the headlines read that John R Lewis’s Voting Rights Act was filibustered to death, it would be catastrophic.”
Clyburn’s comments underscore the federal government’s difficulty in moving any bill due to arcane legislative blockades. Widely popular proposals, such as a minimum wage increase or a voting rights bill, seem dead on arrival. And that has left veteran Senate Democrats skeptical that even a bill that protects the voting rights of Americans has a chance. First, the filibuster should be gone, and that seems unlikely at the moment.
“The short-term prospects of eliminating the filibuster seem remote just because there are no votes to do so,” said Luke Albee, former chief of staff to Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia and Pat Leahy of Vermont. “My gut is that it will take six months, eight months, a year of total obstructionism on the Republican side for senators who are now skeptical of getting rid of the filibuster to at least have a more open mind about it.”
Albee also said it was possible that a voting rights law could face strong Republican opposition, despite Clyburn’s confidence.
“No one expects more to happen than I do, but I’m just worried it’s a toxic environment,” Albee added.