Sens. Joe Manchin of Indiana and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona sharply criticized the vice president on Tuesday after she said she wanted to abolish the congressional filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade.
Manchin, the strongest supporter of the 60-vote threshold, told CNN he would not support Harris being sworn in as president, saying it would be a big mistake to move forward with such a plan if Democrats maintain a slim Senate majority.
“Shame on you,” Manchin, who is retiring at the end of the year, told CNN. “She knows that the filibuster is the Holy Grail of democracy. It’s the only way we can continue to talk and work together. If she does away with the filibuster, it will be like the House is on steroids.”
The West Virginia senator, who left the Democratic party to become an independent in May, added in a statement that the filibuster “stabilizes our democracy, promotes bipartisan cooperation, and protects our country from partisan conflict and dysfunction.”
“I’ve always said, ‘If you can’t change your mind, you can’t change anything,’ and I expect the vice president to remain poised to do just that,” he said.
Sinema agreed.
“To be crystal clear, eliminating the filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade would also allow a future Congress to ban all abortions nationwide,” Sinema, who left the Democratic Party in 2022, wrote on X.
“It’s a really terrible, short-sighted idea,” she added.
Harris has long been a vocal supporter of abolishing the filibuster in Congress, saying in 2019 that she wanted to do away with it in order to pass the Green New Deal.
She added that the bill should be repealed in 2022 to codify abortion and voting rights.
Her comments Tuesday were made during an interview with Wisconsin Public Radio.
“I think we should eliminate the Roe filibuster,” Harris said, “and actually put back into law the protection of reproductive freedom and the right of every person, every woman, to make decisions about their own body without the government telling them what to do.”
President Biden has sought an exception to the filibuster to reinstate Roe following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision.
Both Manchin and Sinema oppose the move and are due to retire from the Senate at the end of the year.
The West Virginia senator had been inching closer to endorsing Harris’ candidacy and had expressed a desire to meet with her to discuss a range of issues.
“I would never say never,” he said earlier this month about the possibility of supporting her.
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