(DCWatchdog.com) – Happening Now: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, announced today that he is prepared to employ what many call the nuclear option – doing away with the United States Senate filibuster rule – to try and pass federal voting rights legislation that could negate voting rights laws recently passed in states like Texas, Florida, and Georgia.
President Joe Biden, a Senate traditionalist who has long opposed changing the filibuster rule, said in a recent interview that he would now support and encourage doing away with the practice in order to pass new federal voting rights laws, namely The Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.
As reported by National Public Radio:
“Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has vowed the Senate will forge ahead on voting rights legislation and will vote on changing the rules of the upper chamber by Jan. 17 if the GOP once again blocks the bill.
“‘We must adapt. The Senate must evolve, like it has many times before,’ Schumer wrote in a Dear Colleague letter Monday morning. This message is his strongest to date suggesting that changes to the legislative filibuster are necessary.”
Going further and linking what he proposes to do to what he believes the Republican Party is doing to maintain power, Schumer raised the spectre of the riot that took place last January 6th at the United States Capitol, stating:
“‘Much like the violent insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol nearly one year ago, Republican officials in states across the country have seized on the former president’s ‘Big Lie’ about widespread voter fraud to enact anti-democratic legislation and seize control of typically non-partisan election administration functions,’ Schumer wrote in the letter.”
What do you think? Should the Democrats in the United States Senate vote to do away with the filibuster rule in an attempt to pass The Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act? Why or why not?
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is vowing to hold a vote on changing Senate rules if Republicans filibuster voting rights legislation put forward by Democrats. https://t.co/Rb9Lo5mr1W
— NPR Politics (@nprpolitics) January 3, 2022
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