This is an insane new demand.
After pledging that he would tackle filibuster changes before Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has urged Democrats to support a voting rights bill that had been stalled.
In a speech on Friday (January 7th), Schumer said he believed the Senate should be “restored to its rightful status as the world’s greatest deliberative body,” before adding that if Republicans continued to “hijack the rules of the chamber to protect us from protecting our democracy” that the Senate would need to debate the rule changes before January 17th.
The Senate Majority Leader would go on to say that if Senate Republicans chose to “abuse the filibuster” preventing the Senate from acting that Democrats would need to adapt.
Schumer’s remarks substantiate what he said last week when he revealed in a “Dear Colleague” letter that he planned to debate the changing of the Senate’s filibuster rules before MLK Day if Republicans continued to block voting rights legislation.
In the letter, Schumer said that Democrats should query “if the right to vote is the cornerstone of our democracy” how they could allow Republicans to “debate and pass voter suppression laws at the State level with only a simple majority vote but not allow the United States to do the same.”
However, the action may not be successful as two Democratic Senators –– Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Senator Krysten Sinema of Arizona –– opposed eliminating the 60-vote threshold to pass legislation.
