By Emily Cousins | Staff Writer
For a Senate rule that wasn’t included in the Constitution, people get really riled up when talking about abolishing the filibuster.
Republicans used the filibuster on Sept. 28 to block a voting rights bill in the Senate.
After former President Donald Trump lost the presidential election, Republicans in state government rushed to make voting harder for people who are more likely to vote blue.
In fact, Gov. Greg Abbott signed a voting bill into law on Sept. 7 that will restrict how and when people can vote in Texas.
To counteract, many states are passing voter suppression laws. The Democrats in Washington are seeking to pass a voting rights bill to protect the right of all Americans to have the chance to vote fairly and easily. If The United States is a democracy — and we value people electing officials to represent them — why would we want to make it harder for people to vote?
All this to say, Democrats in the Senate are going to have an extremely hard time passing progressive bills, such as this one, if the filibuster remains in the way.
Since Democrats have a slim majority of 51 people, including Vice President Kamala Harris as a tie-breaker, they cannot overcome a filibuster because doing so takes at least 60 votes, requiring at least 10 Republicans to support their legislation.
At this point, Republicans have shown us they are not willing to play by the rules, and they will do anything to come out on top through gerrymandering and voter suppression laws. The Democrats cannot out-organize Republicans or persuade them to care about equity.
The best option is to abolish the filibuster. It is standing in the way of important legislation that will benefit all Americans, and this goes beyond voting laws.
The history of the filibuster is also extremely dark. The times it has famously been used were to attempt to block civil rights laws — and specifically to deny rights to Black people.
Now, we are here again. The voter suppression laws passed by Republicans disproportionately affect Black people and other minority communities and their ability to vote.
Republicans are not the only ones standing in the way of President Joe Biden’s agenda being passed in Congress.
Democrat Sens. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have made it clear they will not support getting rid of the filibuster. Both of them have also made it difficult to pass the reconciliation bill and the infrastructure bill, which were previously agreed upon to pass at the same time.
If anything is going to get done, Democrats need to work together. Manchin and Sinema are the minority, and they are making it difficult to improve the lives of the American people. The progressive Democrats are not the problem in this situation, and they are not asking for too much.
If Democrats can find a way to get rid of the filibuster, they will have a much easier time passing laws that people are relying on for things to get better. If Biden’s agenda doesn’t go anywhere because of the filibuster and Manchin and Sinema, nothing will happen, and the huge voter turnout that gave Democrats the House of Representatives and the Senate will have been pointless.
