(RoyalPatriot.com )- President Joe Biden isn’t sitting on the sidelines anymore with regard to the filibuster rule in the Senate.
This week, he’s meeting with Democrats in the Senate as his party is pushing to change the Senate’s filibuster rule so that liberals can try to pass voting rights reform.
A senior aide with the Democratic Party said Biden had planned to attend a caucus lunch behind closed doors “to discuss the push to pass voting rights and potential changes to Senate rules.”
Democrats have passed voting rights legislation in the House, but they have been unable to make any progress in the Senate, where they currently need 60 votes for any bill to pass. The progressive wing of the liberals has urged Biden to exert his influence over Democratic senators so they will change Senate rules to allow the voting rights legislation to go through.
Earlier this week, Biden made a speech from Georgia, urging the Senate to change the Senate filibuster rule so that the voting rights legislation can pass without the support of any Republican in the upper chamber.
In the past, Biden — a former senator himself — has said he would be against changing the filibuster rule, but now he’s apparently changed him mind. In his speech in Georgia, he said he would support changing the filibuster rule “whichever way they need to be changed to prevent a minority of senators from blocking action on voting rights.”
Of course, Biden’s “math” here is off. There isn’t a minority of senators who oppose voting rights legislation. There’s an equal number of senators who are opposed (50) as there are senators who are in favor (50) of the bill.
What Biden should have said is that he believes the rule needs to be changed to prevent senators who aren’t from his party from exercising their duty to represent the will of the people in their districts.
Still, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer intends to introduce voting rights legislation on the Senate floor in the next few days. Then, if the Republicans decide to block the legislation, as they are widely expected to do, he said he would hold a vote on January 17 to change the rules of the Senate.
It won’t be as simple as making a change, though. Two moderate Democratic senators, Krysten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, haven’t said whether they would vote in favor of changing the rules.
Democratic leadership has met with the two senators twice this week to try to convince them of getting on board with the action.
What a change to the filibuster rule would look like hasn’t been determined by Democrats just yet. There are a number of ideas being thrown around, all of which must fit within the limited ability of a simple majority in the Senate.
In the next few days, it should become much clearer as to which path Democrats plan to take to force through yet more of their liberal agenda.
