We Need Action, Not Just Words, From President Biden On Voting Rights
“Establishing federal rules to protect the sacred right to vote should be a top priority for President Biden and his Administration. It may be by Biden’s words, but, to date, it is not by Biden’s actions,” Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer writes in a new op-ed published on Medium and originally released in Wertheimer’s Political Report on July 22, 2021.
Read the full piece here or below:
We Need Action, Not Just Words, From President Biden On Voting Rights
Fred Wertheimer | 7/23/2021 | Medium
President Biden in his passionate voting rights speech on July 13, said, “Perhaps the most important of those things — the most fundamental of those things — is the right to vote.”
The President also said in the speech, “It’s up to all of us to protect that right [to vote]. This is a test of our time.”
So far, Biden is failing this “test of our time.”
President Biden’s comments in a CNN town hall on Wednesday turned his earlier voting rights speech into empty words.
That’s because President Biden’s remarks yesterday made clear that he and the White House are still not willing to engage in the Senate battle to enact S. 1, the For The People Act, historic voting rights legislation which passed the House last March as H.R. 1.
President Biden and the White House certainly have not engaged in the Senate fight to date. There is no evidence that they have done anything.
Let’s be very clear: the state voter suppression and discrimination laws being enacted all over the country will take away the ability of millions of citizens to vote in federal elections — Black, brown, other minorities, the disabled, the elderly, young, and other eligible voters.
The ONLY way these state laws can be overcome is by passing H.R. 1/S. 1 which would establish federal rules for voting in federal elections and supersede state voting laws.
Yet President Biden and his White House have been nowhere to be seen.
The ONLY way S. 1 can be passed in the Senate is by an exception or change in the filibuster rules as has been done routinely over the years, including by none other than the filibuster king, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell.
President Biden ducked this reality in his Philadelphia speech and ignored reality again in his comments last night.
He treats the filibuster rules as a hot iron that he does not want to touch.
Biden said in defense of his filibuster position, “I want to make sure we bring along not just all the Democrats. We bring along Republicans who I know, know better.”
There is no way 10 Republican Senators are going to vote to break a filibuster on the voting rights legislation. Everyone knows this and the President must know it too. This is simply a deflection from reality.
Establishing federal rules to protect the sacred right to vote should be a top priority for President Biden and his Administration. It may be by Biden’s words, but, to date, it is not by Biden’s actions.
Unless President Biden and the White House do a 180 and jump into the Senate battle to pass S. 1, the President is facing being on the wrong side of history in failing to protect the right to vote for millions of Americans.
But, it is not too late.
President Biden should join this battle in the Senate now, just as President Lyndon Johnson did in 1965 when he acted to protect the fundamental right of every eligible American to vote.
