Manchin Rejects Democrats' 'For the People Act' & Reiterates Support for Preserving Senate’s Filibuster

Should Senate Democrats abolish the filibuster to pass their election reform bill?

  • 2,427
    Glowurm
    02/22/2022

    NoHedges, I hope you are well! So wish they would do what you suggest. Always love your comments! 😊❤️😊❤️❤️

  • 2,427
    Glowurm
    10/30/2021

    Right on, NoHedges! 😊❤️😊❤️. Your Grandma is so proud of you, I’m sure. I know I am. This f’n around is going to ruin our country. If you idiots don’t get the voter rights bill and a relief package done NOW, YOU ARE DOOMED IN 2022! You have been waiting too long already! Get rid of the damn filibuster and get her done! Repugnants are not coming to the table. So do what they do and ignore them. Young and Sullivan you are disgusting. Murkowski, you be the Maverick and you may get re-elected. And what the f is up with the Repugnants not allowing the Dems to appoint Ambassador’s to countries? God, they will do ANYTHING to make our country unable to know what is going on worldwide. How dangerous is that to America? But, hell, they don’t care as long as it makes Biden look bad! The Republican Party cares nothing about you and I. When will you people wake up?

  • 24
    Meta
    06/16/2021

    Why do Manchin and Sinema call themselves Democrats? To undermine the will of Democrat voters? Why did democrats vote for them? I just don't get it, do I?

  • 83
    Richard
    06/15/2021

    Democrats are weak to fight back against Republican unethical behaviors—like blocking Merrick Garland from the Supreme Court. Republicans will continue to be obstructionists toward all legislation that helps middle and lower class Americans until Democrats use Republican tactics and make much needed progress in voting rights and districting.

  • 48
    D.
    06/15/2021

    We all should know by now exactly the purpose the filibuster originated. The fact this “tool” not only is still in use but egregiously used by the GOP to have total power in the senate is exactly the opposite of what our forefathers wanted in government. They absolutely wanted debates to occur in order that all sides are given voice in order to come to a compromise. Compromise doesn’t mean everyone is happy, but everyone got something and gave something in return. McConnell doesn’t believe in compromise, he believes in total control by the GOP. The fact that we have blue dogs that would hold up the entire process of debate & compromise to stand with the GOP is infuriating & sickening. Manchin & Sinema should be recalled by their states. They claimed to be DEMs yet never work with the DEMs, they continue to cowtow to the GOP. When a dem works so exclusively against their party’s wishes it makes me ask: what’s in it for them? Money?! Probably. Manchin so openly opposed to DEMs bills and defending the GOP process of filibustering anything they don’t want to deal with, tells me he’s in league with them. And just as an additional trick the GOP controlled senate has done: a vote is supposed to be taken to decide if a piece of legislation will be voted on. McConnell has refused to have legislation brought to the floor for the initial vote to decide to vote. Refusing the initial vote means legislation hangs in limbo... indefinitely. We need to stop the 2 party system we have. We need a multiparty system that reflects all Americans, their ideals, complaints, socioeconomics, and races. We can never be a truly civilized nation until we show civility to ALL its citizens and they all have equal representation. Right now rich white people have most of the representation because they are allowed to purchase their congress people, write the bills they want their congress people to enact, and bribe many with “campaign” money. The first impactful step to dismantling the GOP/rich stranglehold is to get ride of the filibuster entirely.

  • 375
    Ukatsone
    06/14/2021

    I guess Machin is holding to his southern slave principles. Everybody knows why the filibuster was used it was to stall the voting rights act and any legislation to help improve the lives of minorities.

  • 489
    Linda
    06/14/2021

    Should Senate Democrats abolish the filibuster to pass their election reform bill? Manchin has zero historical basis for his stand. The filibuster is new. It has been corrupted. It is a tool used ONLY to block legislation by party, not by ideals. Get rid of it or force those using it to play by the REAL rules. Don't want to stand of 16 hours and talk? Then sit down, shut up and vote for what's good for real Americans and not the rich!

  • 1,281
    justiceforamerica
    06/14/2021

    This is what keeps everything in check.

  • 23
    Timothy
    06/14/2021

    Don’t get rid of it just make it a true fillabuster, a talking fillabuster where members must remain in attendance!!

  • 119
    byron
    06/14/2021

    Reject The Peoples Act.

  • 119
    byron
    06/14/2021

    Keep the filibuster. Thank you Senator Manchin.

  • 56
    Kristen
    06/13/2021

    Any party or person who tries to make voting harder cannot be trusted. The GOP represent less than half of this nation and have been nothing but obstructionists. They no longer have a platform upon which to run, save “praise Trump!” They are not working for this country, they are working for a dictator. That is NOT American. At all.

  • 195
    Dennison
    06/13/2021

    This is the only way I see to get back to a functional government since Republicans block everything and obstruct anything that isn’t exactly what they want.

  • 69
    J
    06/13/2021

    Congress should create two new bills. 1. If a member isn't representing his or her constitutes, the people can a special election and remove them. 2. If a law fails to pass Congress, either 1-3 times a year, it can put to vote by popular vote by the people

  • 24
    Barbara J
    06/13/2021

    Manchin is either the most gullible or among the most corrupt members of Congress. He fits right in with his neighbor KY Senators. To all: free and fair elections are the bedrock of our democracy. To not support legislation which will insure and protect the right to vote, and have it count, is traitorous!

  • 262
    Sheila
    06/12/2021

    He and sinema need to be brought in line. NO filibuster.

  • 629
    Jim
    06/12/2021

    Democrats need to bypass the party of NO, and get America moving forward again. Manchin is a republican pretending to be a democrat. He is a republican mole.

  • 42.5k
    jimK
    06/07/2021

    OPEN LETTER TO JOE MANCHIN:  I certainly admire your statements regarding the need for bipartisanship but it has not happened even a tiny little bit. Even when select groups come up with bipartisan legislation like the January 6th commission, it is hammered back down by Republican leadership. I believe McConnell when he stated that the Republican Senate will not allow any of Biden’s legislation to pass, even though they all stand in line to take credit for the benefits to their constituents for legislation that they vigorously and unanimously voted down. Perhaps they feel that their base supporters are just too stupid to notice and perhaps they are right. Bi-partisanship ain’t gonna happen any time soon enough to make a difference, so just give it up already. The stakes of hanging on to your repeatedly crushed fantasy and not doing what needs to be done now are just too big to ignore. … … .… I have not seen much of the filibuster being used effectively to encourage any meaningful debate, particularly on legislative matters important to the people of this country. I have seen it used mainly as a tool to keep opponents from doing anything so good that they might get political ‘points’ - as a basis to claim that they did not accomplish anything and they need to be replaced by elected Republicans. This is certainly not what the framers or the founders would have wanted and is probably why the filibuster was never part of the constitution. The filibuster needs to be eliminated, neutered or ethics-rules limited to prevent a minority from simply nuking the will of the people and the majority without any political consequence or record of their individual accountability. McConnell has used the filibuster more than ever in recent time because it is now so easy to do. The ease of filibustering without debate renders it useless in today’s Congress and underwrites the public disgust of the perpetual gridlock of the Congress. If you truly want bipartisanship, get the Republicans to engage in real debate or be left behind when the filibuster can longer be used by a minority to gain political advantage. … … .… It is time to suck up your political ambitions and pride- get with Biden’s plans and take back our government to represent the both voting majority’s and our country’s needs and desires. We need Biden’s legislative packages passed in their entirety while there is still time to stop the Republican political gamesmanship for political expedience. Their lust for power for the sake of gaining power by any despicable tactic is quite stupidly opening the doors widely to a full fledged autocracy. As the Republican Party continues to censure members for the ‘crime’ of being honest, it appears that the Party is becoming a political faction instead of a party, existing for it’s own self interests instead of the country’s - and their highly regimented, block-voting war machine will never permit legislation to restrain their efforts to insert their political will to control the voting process. You sir, sit at the the crossroads and without your unqualified support to address the problems our country is now facing, boldly and decisively, you will be the one shunned by history for letting our democracy fail for what appears to be your own self-interests and political ambitions instead of the most critical needs that our country now faces. Agree to drop or neuter the filibuster to prevent it’s use to nuke needed legislation without individual accountability or debate, solely as a political maneuver to prevent opposition legislation from being too good, no matter how necessary. … … …  The factors driving climate change have initiated the Climate Crises which is developing exactly as predicted, with only the ice cover melting faster than predicted because of the soot from global wildfires on our west coast, Australia and Siberia being deposited on ice cover globally. We are a few short decades away from these processes becoming self sustaining with what are essentially global chain reactions driven by increased warming which will accelerate these reactions that will become unstoppable by anything that mankind can safety do. This will become the first ever man-made life extinction event with sea level rises of 23 feet from just the melting ice pack over Greenland alone; With the Antarctic and Siberia now recording temperatures of 70 degrees F, we can expect greater sea level rise and greater release of methane which is currently sequestered in frozen permafrost and the depths of warming oceans. Methane is 34 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas (but does dissipate somewhat faster than CO2). Much of our habitable lands will become uninhabitable with daily temperatures exceeding 130 degrees F or submerged under the riding sea levels. Currently, vast pine forests in northern Canada are being ravaged by pine beetles because they are not seeing enough really cold days to control their spread. These forests are rapidly being converted to standing kindling for new expansive wild fires which will be extremity difficult to control. … … .…  The point is that the Climate Crisis is real and there is not that much time left to prevent reaching the tipping point which is only an annual global average temperature increase of 1.5 degrees C away (We have already warmed the planet by a global annual average of 1.2 degrees C). There is little time to keep global warming from reaching the 1.5 C tipping point and stop the accelerating pace of climate change. The climate will stay as bad as it gets when we reach global net zero CO2 emissions and it will take over a thousand years for natural processes to remove enough CO2 from the atmosphere to restore our climate to what it was. There is some research for man made atmospheric processors to remove CO2 from the atmosphere directly, but nothing that appears to be practically useful at scale. This is a big ass problem that will require some common sense practices like composting left over farm vegetation instead of plowing it under, some improved technologies like smart electrical grids capable of managing power from from many home based roof mounted solar panels producing power to be exported to regions which cannot produce renewable energy due to weather and sending power back to other regions when they cannot produce power at night or due to weather. Advanced science will hopefully find newer ways to safely cool the planet or extract massive amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere, but there are no assuredly safe ways to do so at this time. There is not enough time left for ad hoc methods; coordinated research is needed to assure that the many piece parts can work properly together at scale - because all of the things needed to be done must be done right the first time. … … … We face huge problems which we must collectively begin to work to overcome now. There are no second chances, little time to experiment and preventing the man made life extinction event from happening cannot happen without funding needed research, development, scale up, distribution and collaboration. … … …  Biden’s initiatives taken together are remarkably strategic, synergistic and integrated which begins to resolve many of our country’s issues, prepares our populous to take on future challenges, provides a broad road map to the future and puts our country in a position to not only solve consequential world problems, but to profit by so doing. … … …  The Conservative drive to protect ‘what is’ will not suffice to protect our country from ‘what is coming’ and it’s impact on all of us. The old approach of simply reacting the established way to current threats cannot work with the new, never before seen catastrophic threats on the near horizon. Looking to advance a two year gain is insignificant when compared to a nearly unstoppable decades long threat. … … … Go big on this. Being penny-wise and pound-foolish is risking a great deal of devastating future hardship for our country and the world. The costs of going big on this now are insignificant to the costs of not going big enough to prevent the likely man-made life extinction event on the horizon, with no-one knowing for sure that there are any collection of specific methods and technologies even possible to safely deploy in scale that can prevent a life extinction event or to reverse the climate back to the one we used to enjoy. I for one, would be much more comfortable risking inflationary pressures and dealing with that than risking leaving my grandchildren a planet where they would have to greatly struggle just to have a chance to survive. … … …  I have posted a quick primer on the whys and hows of the evolving Climate Crisis for those who may think that they know what it is about at https://www.causes.com/positions/72af258e-1e6a-4b1a-82db-97d2db4432d2. Please, at least take a moment to read this. … … … The fossil fuel industry can no longer exist as it is but there are options for finding new uses for oil and coal by leveraging these resources to economically mass produce graphene sheets from carbon. Graphene is currently expensive to produce but has many astounding good properties for use in electric power systems and offer really staggering improvement for power storage in lithium-graphene battery systems. These batteries have been demonstrated to offer orders of magnitude improvements over lithium ion batteries in energy capacity, number of charging cycles, charge and discharge rates, durability and safety. Further, they do not require as many strategic nor rare earth materials to manufacture and the inherent strength of graphene makes them much less susceptible to overheating when mechanically damaged. We will need many batteries for electric vehicles and energy storage systems. We also have a great opportunity to use existing resources to meet this need.

  • 663
    Carolyn
    06/11/2021

    I was reading this piece of legislation and there is a part in there that is concerning- there appears to be a religious test in order to participate in redistricting. There is a requirement that a person disclose their religious affiliations. That is unconstitutional. There can be no religious test to hold a position in the government. Yet another reason this should not pass.

  • 23
    James
    06/11/2021

    Bipartisanship is not possible. Republicans are totally anti-democratic! We need more Democrats in both houses of Congress. Destroy the Republican Party!