In addition to passing the controversial “George Floyd Justice in Policing Act” late Wednesday, U.S. House members also voted along party lines to pass H.R. 1, a wide-ranging progressive wish list of voting and ethics “reforms” Democrats first passed early in 2019.
Known as the “For the People Act,” H.R. 1 needs 60 votes to become law, which is doubtful when even Utah Sen. Mitt Romney is opposed.
Minnesota U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, sometimes considered a moderate Democrat compared to today’s more outspoken leftists, joined the latter category this week by concurring with extremist calls to abolish the filibuster.
“I would get rid of the filibuster. I have favored filibuster reform for a long time, and now especially for this critical election bill,” Klobuchar told the left-wing Mother Jones website. “We have a raw exercise of political power going on where people are making it harder to vote and you just can’t let that happen in a democracy because of some old rules in the Senate.”
Klobuchar, who chairs the Senate Rules Committee, officially supports killing the filibuster despite Democrats controlling all three branches of government. She then added an array of partisan clichés as rationale.
“We had an insurrection at the Capitol with rioters who were trying to literally dismantle our democracy. The fundamental issue is do people get to vote or not and are we going to make it easy for them to vote or are we going to put up barriers to make it impossible?” the Minnesotan said.
Democrats clearly are going all in. As the bill passed, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi compared the moment to Valley Forge, saying Democrats must win the fight because “everything is at stake.”
Former Vice President Mike Pence — in a mid-week editorial at the Daily Signal — claimed H.R. 1 would “give leftists a permanent, unfair, and unconstitutional advantage in our political system.”
Democrat Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) do not support abolishing the filibuster.
A partisan MSNBC column Thursday concluded that if the duo “remain committed to the dysfunctional status quo, it doesn’t much matter, at least for now, what the rest of the caucus thinks. But it’s worth keeping in mind that this debate isn’t happening in a vacuum: the more Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his members refuse to work constructively on public policy, the more they push Democrats to eye institutional reforms they used to oppose.”
U.S. Sen. Tina Smith also told the Star Tribune Thursday that she supports abolishing the filibuster.
A.J. Kaufman
A.J. Kaufman is an Alpha News columnist. His work has appeared in the Baltimore Sun, Florida Sun-Sentinel, Indianapolis Star, Israel National News, Orange County Register, St. Cloud Times, Star-Tribune, and across AIM Media Midwest and the Internet. Kaufman previously worked as a school teacher and military historian.
