(Headline USA) Vice President Kamala Harris confirmed this week that she still supports ending the Senate filibuster in order for Democrats to pass radical legislation, the Huffington Post reported.
Harris first called for ending the filibuster, a Senate rule that allows a minority to block legislation pending a vote of 60 senators or more, back in 2019 when she was running for the Democratic presidential nomination. She has continued to support the move as vice president, saying in 2022 that the filibuster is an “archaic Senate rule” standing in the way of progress.
“I cannot wait to cast the deciding vote to break the filibuster on voting rights and reproductive rights,” Harris said at the time. “I cannot wait!”
When asked whether she’s flip-flopped on this issue along with many of her past policies, Harris made clear her position hasn’t changed.
“I think we should eliminate the filibuster for [Roe v. Wade],” Harris told Wisconsin Public Radio on Tuesday. “And get us to the point where 51 votes would be what we need to actually put back in law the protections for reproductive freedom and for the ability of every person and every woman to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do.”
In response, two of the chamber’s more moderate senators blasted Harris.
“To state the supremely obvious, eliminating the filibuster to codify Roe v Wade also enables a future Congress to ban all abortion nationwide,” said Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., who left the Democratic Party in 2022, partially after having faced harsh criticism from an earlier effort by Democrats to abolish the traditional check against the majority.
“What an absolutely terrible, shortsighted idea,” she added.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., agreed, arguing Harris’s unwillingness to protect the filibuster as the “Holy Grail of democracy” lost her his endorsement.
“Shame on her. She knows the filibuster is the Holy Grail of democracy,” Manchin said, according to CNN.
“It’s the only thing that keeps us talking and working together,” he continued. “If she gets rid of that, then this would be the House on steroids.”
Republicans are currently projected to reclaim the Senate, but with a narrow margin, meaning it may be the presidential election that determines control, as it was at the start of the Biden administration.
If former President Donald Trump were to win, putting Vice President JD Vance in charge of the Senate, there is a safe bet that a Harris flip-flop on the filibuster issue would not be far behind.
