No surprise: Republicans block consideration of the For The People Act with a filibuster

As expect­ed, Repub­li­cans in the Unit­ed States Sen­ate today vot­ed against pro­ceed­ing with the con­sid­er­a­tion of the Sen­ate’s ver­sion of the For The Peo­ple Act, which means that for the time being, the leg­is­la­tion is stalled, absent a vote to abol­ish the fil­i­buster, or absent a vote to low­er the fil­i­buster thresh­old and con­vince at least a few Repub­li­cans to back the legislation.

By a vote of fifty to fifty, the Sen­ate failed to invoke clo­ture on S. 1. Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors vowed to keep on fight­ing, while Mitch McConnell, speak­ing on behalf of him­self and his cau­cus, promised not to give an inch.

As the vote was along par­ty lines, the roll call from the Pacif­ic North­west was sim­ple: Democ­rats Mur­ray, Cantwell, Merkley, Wyden, and Tester in favor; Repub­li­cans Risch, Crapo, Murkows­ki, Sul­li­van, and Daines against.

“I want to be clear about what just hap­pened on the Sen­ate floor,” said Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Chuck Schumer (D‑New York) in a short speech.

“Every sin­gle Sen­ate Repub­li­can just vot­ed against start­ing debate — start­ing debate — on leg­is­la­tion to pro­tect Amer­i­cans’ vot­ing rights.”

“Once again, the Sen­ate Repub­li­can minor­i­ty has launched a par­ti­san block­ade of a press­ing issue here in the Unit­ed States Sen­ate, an issue no less fun­da­men­tal than the right to vote,” Schumer con­tin­ued. “I have laid out the facts for weeks. Repub­li­can state leg­is­la­tures across the coun­try are engaged in the most sweep­ing vot­er sup­pres­sion in eighty years.”

“The Repub­li­can leader,” Schumer went on, invok­ing McConnell, “uses the lan­guage and the log­ic of the South­ern Sen­a­tors of the 1960s who defend­ed states’ rights, and it is an inde­fen­si­ble posi­tion for any Sen­a­tor — any Sen­a­tor, let alone the Minor­i­ty Leader — to hold. And yet, that was the rea­son giv­en for why Repub­li­cans vot­ed in lock­step today: “regard­less of what may be hap­pen­ing in some states, there’s no ratio­nale for fed­er­al intervention.”

“That is both ridicu­lous and awful.”

“All we want­ed to do here on the floor was to bring up the issue of vot­ing rights and debate how to com­bat these vicious, often­times dis­crim­i­na­to­ry vot­ing restric­tions. And today, every sin­gle Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor stood togeth­er in the fight to pro­tect the right to vote in Amer­i­ca. The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty in the Sen­ate will always stand unit­ed to defend our democ­ra­cy. I spoke with Pres­i­dent Biden ear­li­er this after­noon as well. He has been unshak­able in his sup­port of S.1 and I want to thank the Pres­i­dent and the Vice Pres­i­dent for their efforts.”

“Today, Democ­rats in Con­gress unan­i­mous­ly came togeth­er to pro­tect the sacred right to vote,” said Pres­i­dent Joe Biden in a state­ment issued by the White House. “In sup­port­ing the For the Peo­ple Act and defend­ing the rights of vot­ers, they stood unit­ed for democ­ra­cy. They stood against the ongo­ing assault of vot­er sup­pres­sion that rep­re­sents a Jim Crow era in the 21st Century.”

“Unfor­tu­nate­ly, a Demo­c­ra­t­ic stand to pro­tect our democ­ra­cy met a sol­id Repub­li­can wall of oppo­si­tion. Sen­ate Repub­li­cans opposed even a debate — even con­sid­er­ing — leg­is­la­tion to pro­tect the right to vote and our democracy.”

“It was the sup­pres­sion of a bill to end vot­er sup­pres­sion — anoth­er attack on vot­ing rights that is sad­ly not unprecedented.”

“The creed ‘We Shall Over­come,’ is a long­time main­stay of the Civ­il Rights Move­ment. By com­ing togeth­er, Democ­rats took the next step for­ward in this con­tin­u­ous strug­gle — not just on Capi­tol Hill, but across the coun­try — and a step for­ward to hon­or all those who came before us, peo­ple of all races and ages, who sac­ri­ficed and died to pro­tect this sacred right.

“I’ll have more to say on this next week,” Biden promised.

“But let me be clear. This fight is far from over — far from over. I’ve been engaged in this work my whole career, and we are going to be ramp­ing up our efforts to over­come again — for the peo­ple, for our very democracy.”

“The Pres­i­dent and I are unde­terred, and I know the Amer­i­can peo­ple are as well,” said Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris. “Like gen­er­a­tions before, we will not give up, we will not give in, and we will con­tin­ue the fight to strength­en the right to vote. We will for­ti­fy and expand the nation­wide coali­tion on vot­ing rights, and pro­mote vot­er engage­ment and reg­is­tra­tion nation­wide. We will lift up lead­ers in the states who are work­ing to stop anti-vot­er leg­is­la­tion, and work with lead­ers in Con­gress to advance fed­er­al leg­is­la­tion that will strength­en vot­ing rights.”

“I’m so dis­ap­point­ed that Repub­li­cans blocked even our abil­i­ty to con­sid­er this vote – but I want Wash­ing­ton State fam­i­lies to know, I’m not going to stop here,” Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray (D‑Washington) said in a state­ment sent to NPI.

“This bill is so impor­tant for the future of our coun­try and our democ­ra­cy and we are going to keep work­ing to get this done.”

“At the heart of this debate is whether we’re going to fight to make sure that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment does its job on con­sti­tu­tion­al rights,” said Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell, Wash­ing­ton State’s oth­er Unit­ed States Senator.

“The For the Peo­ple Act is a com­pre­hen­sive pack­age of elec­tion reforms that sets basic nation­al stan­dards on vot­ing access, cam­paign finance, and ethics rules. The Sen­ate con­sid­ered this bill as more and more states con­tin­ue to restrict Amer­i­cans’ access to the bal­lot box fol­low­ing the 2020 elec­tion — with a dis­pro­por­tion­ate impact on Black and Brown Americans.”

“I feel like there’s a lit­tle bit of hid­ing going on in this dis­cus­sion about whether [the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has] a role, that this is some­how left up to the states, which reminds me when Rosa Parks was sit­ting on a bus, we did­n’t say it’s just up to those indi­vid­ual states or when peo­ple were denied equal accom­mo­da­tions at hotels, we did­n’t say it was just up to those states,” Cantwell remarked.

“And we cer­tain­ly did­n’t say when peo­ple used police dogs try­ing to intim­i­date women to vote in the 1960’s, that it was just up to those states. No, no, no. We did some­thing about it. We passed the 1964 Civ­il Rights Act and the 1965 Vot­ing Rights Act. We did that because intim­i­da­tion was hap­pen­ing and we need­ed to cor­rect for it. This is about whether we do our job in uphold­ing these con­sti­tu­tion­al rights when cer­tain states don’t do that.”

“I will not stop work­ing tire­less­ly to pro­tect the con­sti­tu­tion­al right to vote in every nook and cran­ny of our coun­try,” Ore­gon Sen­a­tor Ron Wyden tweet­ed.

“Democ­rats are unit­ed to pro­tect the right to vote and we’re deter­mined to get this done. Don’t give up! Today’s vote is just the begin­ning!” Sen­a­tor Jeff Merkley tweet­ed. “I assure you this is only Round One in the battle.”

Unlike many oth­er states, Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon have uni­ver­sal vote at home sys­tems with auto­mat­ic vot­er reg­is­tra­tion, mean­ing that vot­ers have sev­er­al weeks in which to return a bal­lot and nev­er have to wor­ry about wait­ing in line for two, four, or eight hours in order to par­tic­i­pate in an elec­tion, or be turned away from a polling place due to not hav­ing a par­tic­u­lar form of identification.

This same sys­tem ought to be avail­able to all Amer­i­cans, and some states are mov­ing towards embrac­ing it, includ­ing Neva­da and Ver­mont. How­ev­er, as men­tioned by Vice Pres­i­dent Har­ris and Major­i­ty Leader Schumer, a num­ber of Repub­li­can-con­trolled states (Texas, Geor­gia, Iowa, Flori­da among them) are mov­ing in the oppo­site direc­tion, and mak­ing it hard­er to vote.

That’s why the For The Peo­ple Act is so sore­ly needed.

Where they con­trol state gov­ern­ments, Repub­li­cans are obsessed with mak­ing it hard­er to vote, just as a past gen­er­a­tion of open­ly racist state offi­cials fought efforts to deseg­re­gate and uphold the civ­il rights of Black Amer­i­cans. Fed­er­al leg­is­la­tion enact­ed as part of the Great Soci­ety, includ­ing the afore­men­tioned Civ­il Rights Act and Vot­ing Rights Act, was instru­men­tal in coun­ter­at­tack­ing the South’s Jim Crow regime and sim­i­lar laws else­where in the country.

If Sen­ate rules per­mit­ted leg­is­la­tion to be con­sid­ered by major­i­ty vote, then the For The Peo­ple Act would have advanced to the floor for con­sid­er­a­tion today with fifty-one votes in favor (Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris would have been able to break the tie). But instead, it became the lat­est vic­tim of the Sen­ate’s six­ty vote pro­ce­dur­al thresh­old, which has become known by the catchall term fil­i­buster.

The fil­i­buster was not con­tem­plat­ed by the Founders, and it is not a facet of the Con­sti­tu­tion. Yet it remains in place in Sen­ate rules because Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors like Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sine­ma, Dianne Fein­stein, and Chris Coons will not com­mit to scrap­ping it. It is telling that the pro-fil­i­buster Demo­c­ra­t­ic fac­tion could not muster a sin­gle Repub­li­can vote to join them in advanc­ing S. 1.

Giv­en that the thresh­old is six­ty votes, the likes of Susan Collins, Lisa Murkows­ki, and Mitt Rom­ney all could have vot­ed to invoke clo­ture with­out jeop­ar­diz­ing the out­come for McConnell and the rest of their Sen­ate Repub­li­can colleagues.

But of course, they didn’t.

Those sen­a­tors may be more inde­pen­dent­ly mind­ed than some of their col­leagues, but they’re not going to help move leg­is­la­tion along that would imper­il the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s abil­i­ty to dis­en­fran­chise vot­ers in key states that will influ­ence who con­trols Con­gress in 2023, and the pres­i­den­cy in 2025.

Whether there ends up being any fed­er­al leg­is­la­tion to pro­tect vot­ing rights in this Con­gress will thus depend on whether the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pro-fil­i­buster fac­tion decides that keep­ing the fil­i­buster is more impor­tant than keep­ing the Republic.

That’s the choice.

What’s it going to be, Sen­a­tor Manchin? Sen­a­tor Sine­ma? You can cer­tain­ly main­tain your pro-fil­i­buster posi­tion for now in the vain hope that some of your Repub­li­can col­leagues will come around… or that you’ll be able to per­suade them to stop fil­i­bus­ter­ing. But even­tu­al­ly, the clock will run out on this Congress.

And if no vot­ing rights leg­is­la­tion is passed, it will be your fault.

Vot­ers in Jan­u­ary in Geor­gia sent you two Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors to ensure the Sen­ate would have a bare work­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic major­i­ty in this Con­gress to do the peo­ple’s work. Togeth­er, as a cau­cus, with Vice Pres­i­dent Har­ris, you have fifty-one votes right now. Use them. Deliv­er for the peo­ple; pro­tect our Republic!

By all means, give Repub­li­cans a chance to vote for any­thing that you’re work­ing on. But if they say no, if they obstruct, if they oper­ate in bad faith — as they have and like­ly will con­tin­ue to — then you must be will­ing to move for­ward with­out them. Oth­er­wise, the effect of your deci­sions will be to keep pow­er con­cen­trat­ed in Mitch McConnel­l’s hands, and sig­nif­i­cant­ly increase the like­li­hood that the Amer­i­can exper­i­ment in democ­ra­cy will not sur­vive the next few years.