CHICAGO — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) says Democrats will prioritize circumventing the Senate filibuster to pass voting rights legislation if they keep control of the White House and Senate and win back the House in November.
Schumer attempted to carve out a loophole in the Senate’s filibuster rule, which requires 60 votes to end debate and move to a final vote on a bill, to pass voting rights legislation in January 2022, but he was blocked by two centrist members of his conference, Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), both of whom are retiring from Congress at the end of the year.
“One of the first things we want to do is what we did first last time, but I think we’ll have more success and that’s democracy, dealing with voting rights, dealing with Citizens United, dealing with reapportionment,” Schumer said at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, adding campaign finance reform and extreme gerrymandering of congressional districts to his top priorities.
Schumer said he worked hard to convince nearly his entire Senate Democratic Conference to support targeted filibuster reform to respond to voting restrictions that multiple states enacted after the 2020 election.
The voting rights legislation the Democratic leader tried to move two years ago would have established nationwide standards for ballot access, established automatic voter registration and made Election Day a national holiday.
Schumer attempted to carve out the Senate’s filibuster rule to allow it to pass with a simple majority, but Manchin and Sinema foiled his attempt.
He said that when he first floated the idea of rolling back part of the filibuster rule, only 35 members of his conference backed the idea.
“There were probably 35 Democrats who were willing to change the rules on that issue. We got it up to 48. Of course, Sinema and Manchin voted no. … Well they’re both gone,” he noted.
Schumer said the Democrat running for Sinema’s Senate seat in Arizona, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), supports filibuster reform to pass voting rights and other democracy-related legislation. Manchin is expected to be replaced by Republican Jim Justice, West Virginia's governor.
Schumer also identified several other priorities.
One was curtailing the impact of the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC, which allowed corporations and outside groups to spend unlimited money on elections.
Democrats are supporting the Disclose Act, which would require organizations spending money in elections, including super PACs and advocacy groups classified under section 501(c)4 of the tax code, to promptly disclose donors who have given $10,000 or more during an election cycle.
It has the support of all 51 members of the Senate Democratic Conference.
Democrats led by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) and Laphonza Butler (Calif.) in February introduced the Redistricting Reform Act of 2024 to ban partisan gerrymandering, to ensure compliance with the 1965 Voting Rights Act and to require that districts be drawn to represent communities of interest and neighborhoods as much as possible.
Schumer told reporters Tuesday that he wants to also prioritize support for affordable housing in any legislation Democrats move under the budget reconciliation process — another path to circumventing Republican filibusters without changing the Senate’s rules.
“In terms of reconciliation, we believe we have to do stuff on housing,” he said. “Housing is a desperate need, all across America. It’s not just in urban areas like New York City. It’s in rural areas they’re desperate for housing. So housing would be a very important issue for us.”
Vice President Harris during a campaign visit to North Carolina this month proposed providing $25,000 in federal assistance to first-time homebuyers if she’s elected president.
Schumer also cited environmental priorities such as reducing carbon emissions.
“We’d like to get it to zero by 2050, and I think we can in a reconciliation bill. It’s very, very important.”
And Schumer said Democrats would want to unwind many of the Trump-era tax reforms, such as the 21 percent corporate tax rate former President Trump established during his first year in office.
While many of the tax reforms enacted under Trump are set to expire in 2025, the corporate tax rate has no sunset date.
Schumer indicated he would want to end Trump’s tax breaks for the nation’s wealthiest individuals and families. Under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the top income tax rate fell from 39.6 percent to 37 percent.
“To deal with our fiscal problems we want to undo some of the Trump tax cuts, which went to the very wealthy, who are doing just great,” he said. “You can pay your fair share of taxes.”
He noted that business groups such as the Business Roundtable only wanted to reduce the corporate tax rate in 2017 from 28 percent to 25 percent. Instead, Trump and his GOP allies cut it down to 21 percent.
“We want to project choice, we want to see how we can do that,” he added, pointing to abortion rights and women’s access to health care as a top priority in a Democratic Congress in 2025.