In a rare event, the Senate convened on Wednesday morning with all Democrats instructed to be in their seats inside the chamber as they try to move forward on voting rights legislation and on a challenge to a long-standing Senate rule, efforts poised to fail without the support of a single Republican and likely even some Democrats.
The high-stakes Senate rules change vote is expected in the early evening.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday that Democrats will seek a carveout to the filibuster rule to pass voting rights legislation by replacing the current 60-vote threshold needed to break a filibuster with an old-fashioned “talking filibuster.”
“We feel very simply: on something as important as voting rights, if Senate Republicans are going to oppose it, they should not be allowed to sit in their office,” Schumer said Tuesday following an evening caucus meeting. “They’ve got to come down on the floor and defend their opposition to voting rights, the wellspring of our democracy. There’s broad, strong feeling in our caucus about that.”
“The eyes of history are upon us,” he said to open debate Wednesday, preemptively defending the effort as a moral win, if not a legislative one. “Win, lose or draw, we are going to vote, especially when the issue relates to the beating heart of democracy.”
Schumer called out Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell directly in his speech, who has led his party to block Democrats’ election reform efforts five times in the last year, blasting him for falsely claiming that red states haven’t changed laws restricting voter access.
“Just as Donald Trump has his big lie, Mitch McConnell now has his: states are not engaging in trying to suppress voters whatsoever,” Schumer said.
He also addressed two Democratic senators who hold what Schumer thinks is a false view: that the chamber’s filibuster brings more bipartisanship — and he countered in his remarks, “Isn’t the protection of voting rights — the most fundamental wellspring of this democracy — more important?”
McConnell, in another blistering speech, git back that a rule change would “destroy the Senate” and warned of a “nuclear winter” if Democrats get their way and “blow up” the chamber’s rules to pass voting rights legislation, which he called a “partisan Frankenstein bill.”
“This is exactly the kind of toxic world view that this president pledged to disavow, but it is exactly what has consumed his party on his watch,” McConnell said, building on days of swipes at President Joe Biden.
McConnell accused Democrats of trying to “smash and grab as much short-term power as they can carry,” and said, “For both groups of senators, this vote will echo for generations.”
When Democratic Whip Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., tried to ask McConnell a question after his speech and get him to engage in debate on the issue, the Republican leader walked away.
“I’m sorry he did not stay for the question,” Durbin said to the chamber. “Does he really believe that there is no evidence of voter suppression in the actions of 19 states?”
Democrats’ election reform bill comes at a time when 19 states have restricted access to voting fueled by false claims in the wake of the 2020 election, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. The bill at hand would make Election Day a federal holiday, expand early voting and mail-in-voting, and give the federal government greater oversight over state elections.
Schumer has proposed reverting to a talking filibuster on the issue with the aim of subverting GOP obstruction to make way for the bill’s final passage.
Under a talking filibuster, senators are required to “hold the floor” during debate, testing their stamina as they must stand and speak to block bills. Once a party runs out of steam and gives in, the chamber would then pass the bill that was filibustered by a simple majority. So, in theory, Vice President Kamala Harris, as president of the Senate, would serve as a tie-breaking vote for Democrats to pass the once-filibustered bill.
But both Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have repeatedly made clear their opposition to changing the filibuster rule to pass voting rights, although they say they support the underlying legislation.
“I don’t know how you break a rule to make a rule,” Manchin told reporters Tuesday, shooting down the proposed talking filibuster.
And without the support of every single Democrat, it’ll be a non-starter in the chamber.
With debate underway Wednesday, there were about 10 empty Democratic chairs in the chamber which means nearly 40 Democratic lawmakers were planted in their chairs about an hour after business kicked off. Some are on their phones, others are taking notes, and one or two appear to be fighting back sleep.
Generally, senators rarely occupy the chamber while debate is open and only those wishing to speak deliver remarks to a largely empty room — but for the high-stakes showdown Wednesday, Democrats are expected to keep the chamber filled throughout the day.
Manchin and Sinema, both planted in their chairs this morning, were expected to buck their party in floor speeches but were seated with their caucus.
McConnell, who has courted the two senators and praised their holding out, gave a highly critical speech of Biden and Democrats on the floor Tuesday as well, after weeks of warning of “scorched earth” if Democrats made a filibuster carveout.
“Does the Senate exist to help narrow majorities double down on divisions or to force broad coalitions to build bridges?” McConnell said on Tuesday. “This fake hysteria does not prove the senate is obsolete it proves the Senate is as necessary as ever.”
Both parties have supported filibuster carveouts in the past decade for judicial nominees – first under then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who lowered the threshold for judicial nominees to 51 votes to make way for then-President Barack Obama’s nominees in 2013. McConnell, as Senate majority leader in 2017, also used the so-called “nuclear option” to confirm then-President Donald Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch.
Across Pennsylvania Avenue, Biden – one day shy of one year in office – will hold a news conference from the White House just before that, where he’ll likely take questions on his stalled legislative agenda.
