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President Joe Biden on Tuesday will back changing Senate filibuster rules to pass voting-rights protections, but reportedly won’t go so far as to support a full-scale elimination of the tradition.
Instead, a senior administration official cited by the New York Times said Biden in an Atlanta speech will say he supports a filibuster “carve-out” for voting rights. The filibuster allows the minority party to kill legislation that doesn’t receive 60 votes.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, has set Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a deadline for either passing voting legislation or considering revising filibuster rules.
“The next few days, when these bills come to a vote, will mark a turning point in this nation,” Biden will say, according to excerpts released by the White House. “Will we choose democracy over autocracy, light over shadow, justice over injustice? I know where I stand.”
As the Associated Press reported, voting-rights advocates in Georgia and nationwide are increasingly anxious about what may happen in 2022 and beyond, following enactment of Republican-pushed laws that make it harder to vote coming off former President Donald Trump’s loss in 2020 and his subsequent push to overturn the results, despite no evidence of widespread fraud.
Democrats, meanwhile, are not in lockstep about changing filibuster rules. Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have both expressed their opposition, and others including Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona are reportedly undecided on the issue.
