Joe Biden, while campaigning for president, was all about unity and bipartisanship.
Since taking office, he has insisted his proposals are bipartisan, even if no Republicans don’t vote for them.
The Hill noted the White House “has shrugged off the criticism, vowing to take big actions at a critical moment to help the economy and address inequality and other needs it says have been ignored for too long.”
That go-it-alone agenda, however, has hit a road bump: Two Democrats have confirmed they are unwilling to change the Senate’s filibuster rule, which requires 60 votes to advance most legislation, Just the News reported.
The two Democrats are Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.
Manchin wrote in a commentary this week that the filibuster “is a critical tool to protecting” the voice of small and rural states “and our democratic form of government.”
“I have said it before and will say it again to remove any shred of doubt: There is no circumstance in which I will vote to eliminate or weaken the filibuster. The time has come to end these political games, and to usher a new era of bipartisanship where we find common ground on the major policy debates facing our nation,” he wrote.
Sinema’s view is similar.
“When you have a place that’s broken and not working, and many would say that’s the Senate today, I don’t think the solution is to erode the rules,” Sinema said in a report in the Wall Street Journal. “I think the solution is for senators to change their behavior and begin to work together, which is what the country wants us to do.”
Senate Democrats as recently has a few years ago – when they were in the minority – affirmed their support for the filibuster. Now with a one-vote majority – they need the vice president’s vote to break a 50-50 tie – they are considering ways to dispense with the longstanding rule.
That’s even though the Democrats have used the procedure hundreds of times in recent years.
Just the News analyzed: “Leaving the filibuster in place in a 50-50 Senate would make it virtually impossible for Biden to move key parts of his agenda through Congress. The filibuster, however, would likely not stop Biden’s $2 trillion American Jobs Plan, given the Senate parliamentarian’s recent ruling that the massive infrastructure package may be considered under budget reconciliation rules, which permit the passage of legislation with a simple majority vote.”
But other major initiatives by Biden, including the nationalization of election laws and LGBT rights, would need 60 votes.
Biden also is pushing gun control, and Democrats has talked of statehood for the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, which would give the Democratic Party four more Democratic senators.
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