WASHINGTON (AP) — All but acknowledging defeat, President Joe Biden said Thursday he’s "not
sure" his elections and voting rights legislation can pass Congress this year. He spoke at the
Capitol after a key fellow Democrat, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, dramatically announced her refusal
to go along with changing Senate rules to muscle past a Republican filibuster blockade.
Biden had ridden to the Capitol to prod Democratic senators in a closed-door meeting, but he not
optimistic when he emerged. He vowed to keep fighting but was talking about next year for the sweeping
legislation that advocates say is vital to protecting elections.
"One thing for certain, like every other major civil rights bill that came along, if we miss the
first time, we could come back and try the second time," he told reporters, his voice rising.
"As long as I’m in the White House, as long as I’m engaged at all, I’m going to be fighting."

Sinema all but dashed the bill’s chances moments earlier, declaring just before Biden arrived on Capitol
Hill that she could not support a "short sighted" rules change.
She said in a speech on the Senate floor that the answer to divisiveness in the Senate is not to change
filibuster rules so one party, even hers, can pass controversial bills. "We must address the
disease itself, the disease of division, to protect our democracy," she said.
The moment once again leaves Biden empty-handed after a high-profile visit to Congress. Earlier forays
did little to advance his other big priority, the "Build Back Better Act" of social and
climate change initiatives. Instead, Biden returns to the White House with his second-year agenda
languishing in Congress.
Biden spoke for more than an hour in private with restive Democrats in the Senate, including Joe Manchin
of West Virginia, who also opposes changing Senate rules.
Since taking control of Congress and the White House last year, Democrats have vowed to counteract a wave
of new state laws, inspired by former President Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election, that
have made it harder to vote. But their efforts have stalled in the narrowly divided Senate, where they
lack the 60 votes out of 100 to overcome a Republican filibuster.
"In recent years, nearly every party-line response to the problems we face in this body, every
partisan action taken to protect a cherished value has led us to more division, not less," Sinema
said from the Senate floor.
For weeks, Sinema and Manchin have come under intense pressure to support a rule change that would allow
the party to pass their legislation with a simple majority — a step both have long opposed.
By taking to the Senate floor shortly before Biden’s arrival, Sinema made clear she would not go along,
further damaging the party’s already slim chances to pass one of its top priorities.
Though Trump and other Republicans also pressed for filibuster changes when he was president, Senate
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., called Sinema’s speech an important act of "political
courage" that could "save the Senate as an institution."
On Tuesday Biden gave a fiery speech in Atlanta, likening opponents of the legislation to racist
historical figures and telling lawmakers they will be "judged by history."
On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the chamber floor, "If the right to vote
is the cornerstone of our democracy, then how can we in good conscience allow for a situation in which
the Republican Party can debate and pass voter suppression laws at the state level with only a simple
majority vote, but not allow the United States Senate to do the same?"
Democrats have shifted their strategy in order to push the legislation forward. They will use existing
Senate rules in an effort to bypass the Republican filibuster that has prevented them from formally
debating the bill on the chamber’s floor. They hope to force a public showdown that could stretch for
days and carry echoes of civil rights battles a generation ago that led to some of the most famous
filibusters in Senate history.
But the new approach also does little to resolve the central problem Democrats face: They lack Republican
support to pass the elections legislation on a bipartisan basis, but also don’t have support from all 50
Democrats for changing the Senate rules to allow passage on their own.
Republicans are nearly unanimous in opposing the legislation, viewing it as federal overreach that would
infringe on states’ abilities to conduct their own elections. And they’ve pointed out that Democrats
opposed changes to the filibuster that Trump sought when he was president.
The Democratic package of voting and ethics legislation would usher in the biggest overhaul of U.S.
elections in a generation, striking down hurdles to voting enacted in the name of election security,
reducing the influence of big money in politics and limiting partisan influence over the drawing of
congressional districts. The package would create national election standards that would trump the
state-level GOP laws. It would also restore the ability of the Justice Department to police election
laws in states with a history of discrimination.
For Democrats and Biden, the legislation is a political imperative. Failure to pass it would break a
major campaign promise to Black voters, who helped hand Democrats control of the White House and
Congress, and would come just before midterm elections when slim Democratic majorities will be on the
line. It would also be the second major setback for Biden’s agenda in a month, after Manchin halted work
on the president’s $2 trillion package of social and environmental initiatives shortly before Christmas.

Schumer had initially set the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, on Jan. 17, as a deadline to either pass
the voting legislation or consider revising the filibuster rules. That vote could still happen.
But under their new strategy, which uses a procedural shortcut, they will be able to actually hold a
debate on the bill without being blocked by a filibuster, which Republicans have deployed four times in
recent months to stop debate.
The mechanics work like this: The House amended an unrelated bill that was already approved both chambers
of Congress, combining Democrats two separate voting bills into one. After the House passed that bill
Thursday, the Senate can debate the measure with a simple majority, bypassing a filibuster. But they
Senate Republicans can still block them from holding a final vote.
After the debate on the bill, Schumer said Democrats still plan to consider changes to the filibuster.

But Manchin, who played a major role writing Democrats’ voting legislation, threw cold water on the hopes
Tuesday, saying any changes should be made with substantial Republican buy-in — even though there aren’t
any Republican senators willing to sign on.
That befuddled South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn, the No. 3 Democrat in the House and a senior member of
the Congressional Black Caucus.
Clyburn questioned the wisdom of reflexively seeking bipartisanship, noting that the right to vote was
granted to newly freed slaves on a party-line vote.
"He seems to be supporting a filibuster of his own bill," Clyburn said of Manchin. "That,
to us, is very disconcerting."
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AP Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro contributed.

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