ATLANTA: President Joe Biden on Tuesday made a full-scale appeal for US voting rights legislation stalled in Congress and said Democratic lawmakers should make a major change to Senate rules to eliminate Republican opposition.
In a speech designed to breathe life into the fight to pass federal voting laws and to convince skeptical Democratic activists of his commitment, Biden called Republicans a coward and a “philibuster” of the US Senate for passing the law. called upon. Committed to changing the rules.
Calling it a “fight for the soul of America,” Biden equated the voting rights effort by slain civil rights leader Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. to the fight against secession.
Republicans have to choose which side of history they want to be on, Biden said, contrasting American civil rights heroes with some of the most notorious white supremacists in American history.
“Do you want to be on the side of Martin Luther King or George Wallace?” Biden asked, referring to the separatist former governor of Alabama. “Do you want to be on the side of (former Congressman) John Lewis or Bull Connor? Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?”
Connor was a commissioner from Birmingham, Alabama, and Davis was the head of a pro-slavery union during the American Civil War.
Biden likens an attempt to a vote-rights struggle against the attack on the US Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump on January 6, 2020, an attack Biden called a “coup attempt”.
Last week, on the one-year anniversary of the attacks, reflected the White House reckoning after a year focused on working with Republicans.
“Not a single Republican has shown the courage to stand up to a lost president, defend America’s right to vote. Not one,” Biden said, referring to Trump and voting rights.
Trump has said the 2020 election was stolen through voter fraud by Biden’s Democrats, despite finding no evidence to support his claim. Since then, Republican lawmakers in 19 states have passed dozens of laws that make voting difficult. Critics say these measures adversely affect minorities.
Before Biden spoke, as he and Vice President Kamala Harris stood in front of King’s grave, King’s family stood nearby, heads bowed. After the ceremony, Biden and Harris spoke nearby at the joint campus of Clark Atlanta University and Morehouse College, two historically black schools.
Biden seeks to build public support for federal legislation to strengthen voting rights, most notably the Freedoms Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. The two have so far dried up under joint opposition from Republicans, who argue they will impose questionable national standards on local elections.
Biden said that if any breakthrough could be achieved on the legislation, lawmakers in the Senate would have to “change the rules for this, including getting rid of filibuster.”
A filibuster is a parliamentary maneuver that requires a 60-vote majority instead of a simple majority in the Senate.
“Sadly, the United States Senate, which is designed to be the largest deliberative body, has been rendered a shell of its former self,” Biden said.
Republicans quickly criticized Biden’s filibuster proposal as overreach.
“The ‘Voting Rights’ bill the Democrats coined is really just a partisan, political power grab. And now they’re pushing this terrible law that creates confusion in our electoral process. Will do,” Senator Mike Crapo said. said after Biden’s speech.
It was Biden’s most direct argument ever for the Senate to change its rules. It is unclear whether votes exist among Democrats to change the rules.
Biden said he had been having quiet talks with lawmakers about the law in recent months, but “I’m tired of being silent.”
Harris, who introduced Biden, warned that without national legislation, newly passed laws in Republican states could affect 55 million Americans.
“Our entire nation will pay the price for generations to come if we stand idly by,” Harris said.
Georgia was a battleground in the 2020 election, and Democrats won two significant US Senate seats in runoff contests in January 2021, giving them effective control of the chamber. Later in the year, the Republican-led state legislature approved sweeping voting restrictions. The US Justice Department sued, saying the law violates the rights of black voters.
Democrats are preparing themselves for a tough 2022 congressional election that could take away their majority and a chance to change federal voting laws.
Many civil rights activists say Biden should have pushed for reforms more during his first year in office, and some, including Georgia’s Stacey Abrams, did not attend his speech.
Biden told reporters at the White House on Tuesday that he spoke to Abrams and that despite the schedule mix-up, they were “on the same page.”