Rep. Mondaire Jones: ‘We Can’t Have Nice Things’ Without Packing the Supreme Court

Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY) said Americans could not have “nice things” without packing the Supreme Court during Thursday’s legislative announcement.

“Unfortunately, we can’t have those nice things with the far-right super majority on the Supreme Court,” Jones remarked in response to a question about his Tuesday tweet in which he said, “Supreme Court expansion is infrastructure.”

Along with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Jones believes many items beyond traditional infrastructure spending are, indeed, such “nice things” like paid leave, child care, and caregiving.”

“I appreciate the question about Supreme Court expansion and infrastructure,” He noted. “So interpret it as you will… But I do mean [the] Supreme Court expansion to be something that is foundational to anything that Congress wants to do, and certainly that is popularly supported by the American people,” he said.

Jones continued, saying he would be surprised if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) would quickly act on the court-packing proposal. “I would have been shocked if the Speaker had said she would allow a floor vote on this today,” he said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi responded Thursday to a question about the proposal, “I don’t know that that’s a good idea or bad idea. I think it’s an idea that to be considered. And I think the president is taking the right approach to have a commission to study such a thing,” Pelosi said in response to President Joe Biden’s court-packing commission, assembled to study the benefits of packing the Court.

Jones also noted during his speech Biden’s commission does not give “instruction” to “make recommendations” upon any suggested legislative action, which Jones said he finds “interesting.”

“We don’t need a commission to tell us that we need to restore balance to the Court in order to do any number of things,” Jones concluded.