Biden says he supports an exception to Senate filibuster

200
3
Biden says he supports an exception to Senate filibuster

Joe Biden said on Thursday he would support an exception to the Senate filibuster to protect access to abortion after the supreme court overturned the right in a historic ruling this month.

If the filibuster gets the way, it is like voting rights, Biden said during a press conference at the Nato summit in Madrid that there should be an exception to the filibuster for this action to deal with the supreme court decision.

The rule is meant to help the Senate act as a less volatile chamber than the House, which works on simple majority votes, and to protect the rights of the minority.

Many conservative Democrats claim that Republicans and some centrist Democrats are more concerned with using the rule more in the archaic, Spanish sense of the word filibuster as pirates or raiders, who ransack the political process to their own advantage.

He is an institutionalist, but he has not supported changes to the filibuster, even carve-outs for key legislation.

In the past, Biden supported a carve-out on the issue of voting rights. The move was intended to respond to Republican attacks on those who are likely to vote Democratic, prominently African Americans, but two Democrats, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, stood in the way of their party.

Biden's latest comments made clear he is willing to support a carve-out to protect abortion rights. Manchin and Sinema would invariably block the move.

With the Senate split 50-50 and controlled by the vice-president, Kamala Harris, the legislative options of Democrats are limited.

Biden is under pressure to take executive action to protect abortion rights. Although his options are limited, he said he would meet governors on Friday to talk about the issue and would have announcements to make. Biden also repeated his harsh criticism of the decision to overturn Roe v Wade, the 1973 decision that guaranteed the right to abortion, and said that other constitutional protections could be at risk from a supreme court appointed by Donald Trump.

Biden said: One thing that has been destabilising is the outrageous behavior of the supreme court of the United States in overruling not only Roe v Wade, but rather challenging the right to privacy. Clarence Thomas, senior conservative on the court, wrote that other privacy-based rights, to contraception, gay sex and same sex marriage, should be examined.

Thomas did not say that another such right, to interracial marriage, was in question. He is black. His wife, the far-right activist Ginni Thomas, is white.

Biden is a devout Catholic, having seen many US left question his bona fides as a supporter of abortion rights. The president's remarks in Spain met with rather weary responses.

Elie Mystal, Justice correspondent for the Nation, wrote: Oh look, Biden said he was not open to changing the filibuster in order to pass a federal abortion law. People complained that he had changed his mind, and now he has changed his mind. It's almost like telling elected officials what we want them to do makes them more likely to do it.