Gazette-Mail editorial: Manchin needs to offer ideas on deadlock

Jan 20, 2022 — It wasn’t surprising that Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., wouldn’t back changes to the filibuster Wednesday after his own voting rights bill was blocked for debate by Republicans. Manchin has said time and again that he won’t eliminate the Senate filibuster — a measure for the minority power in the Senate to block legislation and takes 60 votes to end — because the consequences going forward would be too great. He has a point. If all a party needs to pass policy in the Senate is a simple majority, the country could be subject to tumultuous changes each time the party in power shifted, rocking back and forth like a boat lurching through a storm. But if Manchin thinks the filibuster is so sacred, he needs to be the one to come up with a way to get past it on important bills that doesn’t completely muffle a minority party’s voice in the future.

All Manchin has offered up so far is the refrain of “bipartisanship.” He points to the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that easily passed the Senate earlier this year as an example that Democrats and Republicans sitting down and hammering out a deal isn’t so old-fashioned. That’s all well and good, but the voting rights legislation is a completely different animal. It would make Election Day a national holiday so people don’t have to take time off from work to go vote. It would hinder dark money in campaign advertising. It would end gerrymandering and allow mail-in ballot access for everyone. In a perfect world, no one would be against legislation designed to uphold the most sacred tenets of U.S. democracy in cleaning up elections and removing obstacles to voting. But the GOP long ago adopted the strategy that lower turnout and favorable districts are what keep their party members in office.

Furthermore, several Republican-controlled legislatures have passed a slew of state laws clearly designed to make it more difficult for certain people to vote. These laws have been enacted in the false name of election security, based off former president Donald Trump’s continually disproved and blatantly untrue claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

Manchin can find all the compromises he wants — and, in many cases, he has — and it won’t get one Republican in the Senate, let alone the necessary 10, to break the filibuster and allow the bill to come to the floor for debate and a vote. Manchin has to know this by now. He also has to know that the Republican minority in the Senate, led by Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is never going to play fair. Lacking the majority he needed during Trump’s administration, McConnell led the charge to eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations, as he rammed judges through, including one month before the 2020 election, despite stalling out a Barack Obama nominee for nearly a year because, McConnell said, such decisions shouldn’t be made with a presidential election looming. Of course, McConnell is now all about the sanctity of the filibuster.

The Democrats have eliminated the filibuster in the past, too, to get federal judicial nominees through the confirmation process. It’s understandable that Manchin would have reservations about killing the filibuster for voting rights legislation. It could open the door to simple majorities passing all kinds of things under that umbrella in the future. But Manchin also has to understand how high the stakes are on this particular issue. Republicans are blocking a bill that basically affirms the future of democratic elections in this country. There are other modifications that could be considered, like returning to a filibuster where the opponent of a bill must literally stand there and speak, instead of merely signaling intent and walking out.

The threshold of 60 votes (which has been lowered from past standards) could be reduced again, and maybe Manchin could talk a few Republicans into crossing the aisle. But Manchin has indicated that he’s opposed to these types of reforms, too. So, now, it’s up to Manchin to come up with a plan that is acceptable. The filibuster is being abused to stop legislation no proponent of democracy should oppose. Manchin needs to show the way forward. If he doesn’t, it calls into question why he was so insistent on authoring this compromise legislation in the first place and how much he really believes in it.

URL: https://www.wvgazettemail.com/opinion/editorial/gazette-mail-editorial-manchin-needs-to-offer-ideas-on-deadlock/article_113990d9-3f6c-5bd4-bb74-909577c08f84.html

-– Greta Thunberg