One of the most powerful Democrats in Washington has issued a frank warning to members of his own party, saying they must find a way to pass major voting rights legislation or they will lose control of Congress.
Comments from Jim Clyburn, the majority leader in the House, came days after the House of Representatives passed a broad bill on voting rights that would enact some of the most dramatic expansions of voting rights since the 1965. Even if Democrats also control the US Senate, the bill is unlikely to pass the House because of a procedural rule, obstruction, which requires 60 votes to move the legislation forward.
In an interview with the Guardian this week, Clyburn called two moderate Democratic senators, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who objected to getting rid of the obstruction. Republicans across the country are advancing comprehensive measures to restrict voting rights, and allowing broad voting rights legislation to die would hurt Democrats, said Clyburn.
“There is no way under the sun that in 2021 we are going to allow the obstruction to be used to deny the right to vote. This is simply not going to happen. That would be catastrophic, ”he said. “If Manchin and Sinema like to be the majority, they better find a way to get around the obstruction when it comes to voting and civil rights.”
Clyburn issued this warning before the 56th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the day in 1965 when police officers brutally beat activists for voting rights in Selma, Alabama.
Clyburn and other House Democrats hope that the early days of Joe Biden’s administration will be marked by the passing of a bill named after the late Congressman John Lewis of Georgia, a civil rights hero who was almost killed on Bloody Sunday. This measure would restore a fundamental provision of the Voting Rights Act, which was eliminated by the supreme court in 2013, which required places with a history of electoral discrimination to get electoral changes to be approved by the federal government before they took effect.
“Here we are talking about the Voting Rights Law that he worked so hard for and that has the name in his honor and will they obstruct it until death? It won’t happen, ”said Clyburn.
But the likelihood of this bill becoming law is doubtful under current procedures. Democrats hope Republicans will find a reason to obstruct it after its approval by the House of Representatives and consideration in the Senate. Thus, Clyburn is calling for some sort of circumventing the obstruction in the current legislative climate, in which the Senate is divided into 50-50 and the use of the legislative obstruction mechanism is very common.
“I am not going to say that you should get rid of the obstruction. I would say that you would do well to develop a Manchin-Sinema rule on how to get around obstruction when it comes to race and civil rights, ”said Clyburn.
Clyburn said he did not discuss changing the obstruction with Biden, who expressed support for keeping the obstruction in place.
The reality of its small majority and the regularity of legislation dying from obstruction has led Democrats to choose to approve the Biden administration’s Covid relief package through a budget process called reconciliation, which is not subject to the 60 vote limit. obstruction proof. Clyburn wants to see the same thing with civil rights.
“You can’t block the budget,” said Clyburn. “This is why we have rules for reconciliation. We need reconciliation of civil rights and voting. This should have been allowed for reconciliation a long, long time ago. “
He noted: “If the headlines said that the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act was obstructed to death, it would be catastrophic.”
Clyburn’s comments underscore the federal government’s difficulty in moving any bill because of enigmatic legislative blockages. Widely popular proposals, such as an increase in the minimum wage or a voting rights bill, seem dead on arrival. And that has made Senate Democratic veterans skeptical that even a bill protecting Americans’ voting rights has a chance. First, the obstructionist would have to leave, and that seems unlikely at the moment.
“The prospects for ending the obstruction seem remote just because there are no votes for it,” said Luke Albee, former chief of staff to Democratic senators Mark Warner of Virginia and Pat Leahy of Vermont. “My instinct is that it will take six months, eight months, a year of total obstructionism on the Republican side for senators who are now skeptical of getting rid of the obstruction to at least have a more open mind about it.”
Albee also said that it is possible for a Voting Rights Act to face strong Republican opposition, despite Clyburn’s confidence.
“Nobody expects it to pass more than I do, but I only care that it is a toxic environment,” added Albee.