McConnell: With filibuster vote, Schumer is 'trying to short-circuit a debate that he cannot win'

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Senate Democrats' vote to change filibuster 'doomed to fail'

Fox News congressional correspondent Chad Pergram has the latest on the filibuster fight.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., accused Democrats pushing to eliminate the filibuster for a voting rights bill of playing up "fake panic" in order to undermine the American political system.

In remarks on the Senate floor Wednesday morning, McConnell claimed that Democrats were trying to divide the nation for political gain, when they should be more focused on "real crises" like inflation, the coronavirus pandemic, violent crime, the southern border, or Russia's actions in Europe.

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"Instead they’ve been consumed by a fake panic over election laws that seem to exist only in their own imaginations," McConnell said.

The Republican spoke after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., repeated his party's talking point that they must keep GOP-controlled states from enacting election laws that they claim are racist and meant to suppress minority votes.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell speaks to reporters after a Republican strategy meeting at the Capitol in Washington, Oct. 19, 2021. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Schumer likened modern laws that require voters to show identification and forbid ballot harvesting to laws passed by southern states after Black Americans gained the right to vote in 1870 that were meant to keep them from voting. Those laws included poll taxes and, as Schumer emphasized, "onerous registration requirements."

Democrats, including President Biden, have accused Republican states of passing laws that amount to "Jim Crow 2.0," and McConnell recalled how Biden's blatant misrepresentations of Georgia's law earned him "Four Pinnochios" by the Washington Post's fact-checker.

In reality, McConnell said, Georgia’s law "is objectively more open than rules in blue states like Delaware and New York."

McConnell also stated that contrary to what his Democratic colleagues say, "significantly more Americans believe current voting laws are too loose and insecure than believe are too restrictive."

The Republican leader accused Democrats of using the issue as an excuse to try to chip away at the filibuster.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer speaks to the media after a Democratic policy luncheon, Oct. 19, 2021, on Capitol Hill.  (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

"This is not some modest bill about ballot access. It is a sprawling takeover of our whole political system," McConnell said. "It was never even intended to attract bipartisan support. This partisan Frankenstein bill that House Democrats slapped together was intended to do just one thing and one thing only: give the Senate Democratic leader a pretext – a pretext to break the Senate."

"Our colleague from New York will try to kill the character of the institution he is supposed to protect and to serve," McConnell added, despite Schumer himself once warning that eliminating the filibuster would turn the U.S. into a "banana republic."

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Further claiming that the vote on a voting rights bill is nothing more than a political ploy, McConnell pointed to the speed at which Democrats have moved on it.

"Our colleague is not trying to conclude an unending discussion that he cannot stop, he’s trying to short-circuit a debate that he cannot win," McConnell said. "This is just the kind of short-sighted power grab this body was actually built to stop."

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"With hope, with confidence, we will stand up and say that our institutions are worth protecting," he later said. "That rules matter."

The Senate is expected to vote to eliminate the filibuster for the voting rights bill some time Wednesday evening. It is all but guaranteed to fail, as all Republicans are opposed to the move, as are Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

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Still, Schumer wanted to hold a vote to expose those who will not vote alongside him. McConnell noted the significance of establishing that record.

"Who has the courage to protect every single American voice in this chamber no matter their home state, no matter their politics? And who will vote to silence millions of citizens for the sin of voting for the wrong team?" McConnell asked. "The American people deserve to know, and from this day forward, they will."