Democrats have been struggling to get their marquee election reform bill passed in an evenly split Senate, where Republicans remain unified in their opposition and rules require 60 votes to advance most pieces of legislation.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar
Senatrix from Minnesota, candidate for the Dem presidential 2020 nomination. You can tell the kind of husband a boy will make by the way he treats his mother. You can tell the kind of leader a politician will make by the way he treats his staff. Klobuchar is reportedly overbearing, snide, and dictatorial with her people. She see this as merely getting the bestfrom them. Her name spelled backward in the Russian alphabet would be "Rachubolk," which sounds pretty daggone suspicious...
, a Democrat from Minnesota who chairs the powerful Senate Rules Committee, said in an interview that the priority continues to be passing the legislation known as the For the People Act, which would usher in minimum voting standards in the U.S. such as automatic and same-day voter registration, early voting and no-excuse absentee voting.
But Klobuchar noted that Democrats could also use the process known as reconciliation to advance financial incentives for states to adopt certain reforms. Election systems have been designated critical infrastructure on par with the nation’s power plants, banks and dams.
"You can do election infrastructure in there because that is part of infrastructure," Klobuchar said. "It’s no substitute for the For the People Act, but it is something we can start working on immediately and are working on right now."
Pushing election-related measures into the infrastructure bill would be a high-stakes gambit with no guarantee of success.
Under the congressional budget process, certain measures regarding revenues, spending and the debt can be approved with a 51-vote threshold, which is why Democrats are pursuing it. The process allows them to bypass a near-certain filibuster from Republicans.
But there’s a catch: The Senate’s nonpartisan parliamentarian can rule for the removal of any provision not directly related to the budget, or items whose budget impact is "merely incidental" to their intended policy changes.
In the end, Democrats would not achieve their goal of federal standards through the infrastructure bill alone but could incentivize some states to move in that direction.
"Money with incentives has passed before. So let’s see what we can get approved," Klobuchar said. "But again, that is only part of it. Look, it’s not the whole thing, right? But it’s a tool you don’t want to let go."
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Related:
For the People Act: 2021-07-18 Three Texas Democrats who fled to Washington, D.C. test positive for coronavirus
For the People Act: 2021-07-11 Dems' outrageous attempt to tilt elections in their favor
For the People Act: 2021-06-29 Desperate Barack Obama Pleads with Lawmakers to Push Through ‘For the People Act' to Make it Easier For Democrats to Steal Elections (VIDEO)
For the People Act: 2021-07-18 Three Texas Democrats who fled to Washington, D.C. test positive for coronavirus
For the People Act: 2021-07-11 Dems' outrageous attempt to tilt elections in their favor
For the People Act: 2021-06-29 Desperate Barack Obama Pleads with Lawmakers to Push Through ‘For the People Act' to Make it Easier For Democrats to Steal Elections (VIDEO)