Kyrsten Sinema, Joe Manchin Reject Biden's Plea to Destroy Filibuster, Election Integrity

Wendell HuseboJanuary 13, 2022

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) on Thursday rejected President Biden’s plea to destroy the 60-vote filibuster threshold that would make way for election integrity destruction.

Speaking from the Senate floor while Biden was urging Democrat senators to curtail the filibuster, Sinema defended the filibuster as the deliberative body’s mechanism for thoughtful public debate.

“This week’s harried discussions about Senate rules are but a poor substitute for what I believe could have and should have been a thoughtful public debate at any time over the past year,” she said.

“But what is the legislative filibuster, other than a tool that requires new federal policy to be broadly supported by senators, representing the broader cross-section of Americans?” she continued. “Demands to eliminate this threshold from whichever party holds the fleeting majority amount to a group of people separated on two sides of a canyon, shouting that solution to their colleagues.”

Sinema’s statement is important because Biden needs all 50 Democrats senators’ “yes” votes to alter the filibuster’s rules.

MANCHIN just now on Sinema’s speech: “Very good. Excellent speech.”

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) January 13, 2022

Sinema also echoed Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) comments on Wednesday that stressed the importance of the filibuster in an evenly divided Congress.

“Today marks the longest time in history that the Senate has been equally divided. The House of Representatives is nearly equally divided as well,” she explained.

“Our mandate, it seems evident to me, [is to] work together and get stuff done for America,” Sinema said.

On the matter of destroying election integrity, Sinema indicated she supports the Democrats’ effort to federalize local elections but that the bills “‘do not fully address the disease” of division.

“These bills help treat the symptoms of the disease, but they do not fully address the disease itself. And while I continue to support these bills, I will not support separate actions that worsen the underlying disease of division affecting our country,” Sinema concluded.

Her remarks begin at the 3:40 mark below.

LIVE: Senator Kyrsten Sinema speaks on Senate floor https://t.co/wKJ7S1aiKI

— Reuters (@Reuters) January 13, 2022

Manchin told reporters after Sinema’s speech that he supported her position. “Very good. Excellent speech,” he said.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Wednesday Biden would visit the Senate for a Thursday lunch to impress upon the Democrats the importance of destroying election integrity.

“This is a defining moment that will divide everything before and everything after when the most fundamental American right that all others flow from, the right to vote and have your vote counted, is at risk,” Psaki said. “He’s heading up to the Hill tomorrow to speak to the caucus and make the strong case that you’ve heard him make publicly directly to members.”

On Tuesday, Biden visited Georgia and called for the expansion of unsecure mail-in-ballot drop boxes and few voter ID restrictions.

“Voting by mail is a safe and convenient way to get more people to vote,” Biden said. “So they are making it harder to vote by mail.”

“To protect our democracy, I support changing the Senate rules,” he said about terminating the filibuster. “When it comes to protecting majority rule in America, the majority should rule in the United States Senate.”

On January 4, Georgia Election officials opened a probe into possible illegal ballot harvesting in the 2020 election via True the Vote evidence, which reportedly includes phone data correlated with video that shows individuals dropping ballots at 5,662 ballot drops during the 2020 pandemic.

Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø