(Bloomberg) — President Joe Biden cast doubt on whether long-shot voting rights legislation can pass Congress but said he’d continue fighting to win approval as long as he’s in the White House.
“I hope we get this done,” Biden told reporters after meeting with Senate Democrats on Thursday behind closed doors. “The honest-to-God answer is: I don’t know if we get this done.”
Biden said if the measure fails in the Senate, he’ll try again.
“As long as I have a breath in me, as long as I’m in the White House, as long as I’m engaged at all, I’m going to be fighting” for legislation to counter measures in Republican-led states that limit voting rights, he said.
His comments came after Democrat Kyrsten Sinema said Thursday she opposes a Biden-backed effort to change Senate rules to win approval of the legislation, depriving the president of key support in a chamber divided 50-50. Republicans oppose the voting rights measures.
Just before Biden arrived at the Capitol to huddle with all 50 Senate Democrats, the Arizona senator said on the Senate floor that the filibuster, which requires 60 votes for most legislation to advance, protects the country “from wild reversals on federal policy” when control of Congress changes hands.
‘Broader Challenges’
“While I continue to support these bills, I will not support separate actions that worsen the underlying disease of division infecting our country,” Sinema said. “The debate over the 60-vote threshold shines a light on our broader challenges.”
At issue is the fate of two Democrat-drafted voting rights measures that were combined into a single bill passed by the House earlier Thursday. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has set up the legislation as a test of the Senate rules that give the minority party broad power over what bills can get a vote.
The stakes for Biden and congressional Democrats are high, with civil rights groups and other progressives increasingly restive over the legislation, which has been blocked by Republicans in the Senate using the chamber’s filibuster rule.
Biden, who progressives have slammed for not doing enough on the issue, has sought to persuade Sinema and Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia to go along with altering the filibuster to get the legislation passed.
Manchin, who has thwarted Biden’s economic agenda in the Senate, had little to say afterward except that Biden did “an excellent job” in his remarks to senators. He said it was time to let things “play out.”
Difficult Path
Maine Senator Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, said Sinema’s remarks made the path forward “very difficult.”
“She believes that the risk of changing the filibuster is greater than the risk of what’s going on in the states,” he said. “I hope profoundly that she’s right. I fear that she’s wrong.”
Republicans, who have blocked the voting legislation in the past, praised Sinema for opposing changing the Senate rules.
“It was extraordinarily important,” Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell said. “And she has, with a conspicuous act of political courage, saved the Senate as an institution.”
Schumer said after Biden left that Democrats would do everything they can to pass the voting rights legislation, but he didn’t set out a plan.
As part of a procedural gambit, the House earlier Thursday put the two elections measures into an unrelated NASA bill that had already passed the Senate. That will allow Schumer to bring the bill up for debate without risk of a Republican filibuster, but it still will need 60 votes in the evenly divided Senate for move to the floor for a vote on final passage.
At that point, he had planned to seek a Senate rules change by a simple majority vote. But that requires agreement from all Democrats and the Senate’s two independents.
Manchin and Sinema aren’t alone in their wariness of significantly changing the filibuster rules. Others, including Jon Tester of Montana, say they don’t want to have a one-time “carve out” to end the filibuster simply to pass the voting rights legislation.
Underscoring the tenuous position Democrats are in as they try to get 50 votes to change Senate rules, Hawaii Democratic Senator Brian Schatz said he tested positive for Covid-19 earlier this week and was isolating at home. It was unclear how soon he would return.
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