Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) continues to staunchly oppose ending the filibuster, despite growing pressure from the extreme left wing of the Democrat party.
Sinema reaffirmed her position in a Washington Post op-ed Monday, saying ending the filibuster will do more harm than good:
To those who want to eliminate the legislative filibuster to pass the For the People Act (voting-rights legislation I support and have co-sponsored), I would ask: Would it be good for our country if we did, only to see that legislation rescinded a few years from now and replaced by a nationwide voter-ID law or restrictions on voting by mail in federal elections, over the objections of the minority?
Her op-ed ran the same day that far-left group “Just Democracy” began running a $1.2 million targeted ad campaign to pressure Sinema into trashing the filibuster, Breitbart News previously reported. The campaign, which will run from June 21 – June 30, comes amid Democrat fears that Republicans will use the filibuster to block the legislation designed cancel state voter ID laws and publicly fund political campaigns.
The “For the People Act” is up for a vote in the Senate this week — legislation which Democrats say will restore faith in democracy and Republicans say will rig elections permanently in Democrats’ favor.
In her op-ed, Sinema said that Democrats are too focused on ending the filibuster and ramming through legislation and not focused enough on the issues they were elected to combat.
Arizonans expect me to do what I promised when I ran for the House and the Senate: to be independent — like Arizona — and to work with anyone to achieve lasting results.
Lasting results — rather than temporary victories, destined to be reversed, undermining the certainty that America’s families and employers depend on.
Ending the filibuster has been gaining steam in Democrat circles since President Joe Biden parroted former President Barrack Obama in his first solo-press conference in March, calling the filibuster a “Jim Crow relic.”
The Democrat Party used the filibuster more than Republicans in 2020 when they were the minority, despite calling the filibuster a racist tactic in 2021.
Fox News’s John Roberts tweeted in March that after the president “denounced the rampant abuse of the filibuster last year, we did some digging. Republicans used it once. Democrats used it 327 times”:
After @POTUS @JoeBiden denounced the rampant abuse of the filibuster last year, we did some digging. Republicans used it once. Democrats used it 327 times. @FoxNews
— John Roberts (@johnrobertsFox) March 26, 2021
Sinema mentioned Democrats’ use of the filibuster and how she thinks it has benefited her party in the past:
But a Democratic Senate minority used the 60-vote threshold just last year to filibuster a police reform proposal and a covid-relief bill that many Democrats viewed as inadequate. Those filibusters were mounted not as attempts to block progress, but to force continued negotiations toward better solutions.
Rather than working to squash all opposition in favor of short-term victories, Sinema lobbied for a more patient and thoughtful approach, saying, “Instability, partisanship and tribalism continue to infect our politics. The solution, however, is not to continue weakening our democracy’s guardrails. If we eliminate the Senate’s 60-vote threshold, we will lose much more than we gain.”
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