Sen. Joe Manchin says he “can’t imagine” supporting making an exception to Senate filibuster rules in order to pass the Democrats’ wide ranging elections and campaign finance reform bill, which is a top priority for his party.
“I can’t imagine a carve-out,” the moderate Democratic senator from West Virginia said on Sunday during an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” when asked if he could back such a move.The filibuster, a longstanding Senate tradition requiring 60 votes in the 100-member chamber to advance a bill, effectively allows the minority party to block certain legislation. The Senate is currently evenly split 50/50 between the two parties, with the Democrats holding a razor-thin majority due to the tiebreaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris through her constitutional role as president of the Senate.
But the Democrats are nowhere close to obtaining the 60 votes needed to quash a filibuster. They don’t even have the simple majority needed to eliminate the legislative filibuster rule. Manchin and fellow moderate Democrat Sen. Kyrsten Sinema are opposed to the push by lawmakers from the left of their party to scrap the filibuster.
