WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats are on the verge of handing President Joe Biden another defeat as they take up voting-rights legislation with extraordinarily long odds in the evenly divided chamber.
The legislation’s fate, which will be sealed when at least two Democrats vote as expected against changing Senate rules to ease its passage, shatters yet another party goal and underscores the difficulty of pursuing the party’s priorities with the narrowest of congressional majorities.
Democrats say their move will put every senator on the record on a bill written to expand ballot access. But it also highlights fractures within the party as Democrats head into an election year in a climate that strongly favors Republicans.
The issue could come to a head on Wednesday, the same day that Biden has scheduled a news conference. As he approaches the one-year anniversary of his presidency, Biden is faced with major challenges, including a stalled domestic agenda, inflation and Russia threatening war in Ukraine.
Moments after the Senate formally opened debate on Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said it’s imperative to overcome Republican opposition and consider a measure aimed at countering new laws in GOP-led states that he argues are aimed at suppressing voting by Democratic-leaning residents. With Republicans set to again block passage, Schumer plans to hold a vote as soon as Wednesday on whether to change the chamber’s filibuster rules, which require at least 60 votes to move forward with most legislation.
“Senate Democrats are under no illusion that we face difficult odds, especially when virtually every Senate Republican — every Senate Republican — is staunchly against legislation protecting the right to vote,” Schumer said. “When this chamber confronts a question this important, one so vital to our country, so vital to our ideals, so vital to the future of our democracy, you don’t slide it off the table and say never mind.”
Biden last week acknowledged his drive for voting-rights legislation could be doomed after Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia reaffirmed their opposition to changing filibuster rules to allow the bill to move forward with a simple majority.
After meeting privately with Senate Democrats, Biden said while he hoped lawmakers would advance the measure, “the honest-to-God answer is: I don’t know if we can get this done.”
Senate Republicans say the legislation is designed to benefit the Democratic Party in elections and that the debate is taking time away from more pressing issues like rising inflation and expanding coronavirus cases. Minority leader Mitch McConnell said Democrats have pushed for these changes long before GOP state legislatures passed their new laws.
“Targeting Americans’ online speech and sending government money to political campaigns is not about civil rights,” McConnell said Tuesday. “It’s about tilting the playing field, weakening widely popular voter I.D. laws and making it harder to produce accurate voters rolls. It’s not about making voting easier, it’s about making cheating easier.”
The debate will center on two Democrat-drafted voting rights measures that were combined into a single bill passed by the House last week — an approach that allows the Senate to begin debate without a GOP filibuster but doesn’t prevent Republicans from blocking a final vote.
The legislation includes the Freedom to Vote Act, a broad bill backed by every Senate Democrat and designed to expand ballot access, and a second measure that restores the Justice Department’s ability to require some states to get pre-clearance for changes to their voting laws.
Progressives have insisted Schumer do everything in his power to debate the legislation, even though it’s all but certainly headed for failure.
There is a nascent effort by several senators including Manchin, Sinema and Republican Susan Collins of Maine to draw up a more modest package of election law changes dealing with the Electoral Count Act and preventing interference in election administration. But it has yet to gain traction with Democratic leadership.
Senate Democrats used their slim majority to muscle a $1.9 trillion economic rescue package and a $550 billion bipartisan infrastructure deal through the chamber last year.
But divisions within the party itself have only deepened, with efforts by some Democratic activists already under way to defeat Sinema in her 2024 primary. Meanwhile, senators including Budget Chair Bernie Sanders are frustrated with Manchin for forcing Democrats to further shrink Biden’s larger tax-and-spending package, the one bill Republicans can’t filibuster.
Democrats want to turn back to slow-going negotiations over Biden’s nearly $2 trillion economic agenda after voting rights. But there isn’t yet a deal on a smaller package after talks between Biden and Manchin over its scope and contents broke down in December.
There are a few areas where Democrats and Republicans could find compromise in the coming months, including a bipartisan China competition bill packed with subsidies for semiconductor companies. The Senate passed the bill last year and is negotiating a final package with the House.
McConnell has also suggested lawmakers could reach a deal on an omnibus appropriations package for the rest of the fiscal year before a Feb. 18 deadline, when existing stopgap funding ends. House and Senate appropriators met last week to begin hashing out differences.
