President Biden’s call to change Senate filibuster rules to pass voting rights legislation has received a serious endorsement by former US President Barack Obama who penned his first op-ed since leaving the White House
Former President used his opinion piece for USA Today, to emphasize something that he says the late Rep. John Lewis understood all too well – the work that must go into protecting democracy.
This actually isn’t the first time that Obama has made a clear stance on eliminating the filibuster – calling the Senate rule a Jim Crow relic – since he suggested the same when delivering Lewis’ eulogy in 2020, saying it’d be part of sweeping voting reforms he wanted to pass in the Georgia congressman’s honor.
Obama reiterated his stand in his op-ed, arguing that the filibuster has no basis in the Constitution and was used as a tool mainly by Southern senators in their efforts to keep Jim Crow laws on the books and to obstruct the passage of civil rights legislation.
He wrote that the Senate minority are routinely using the filibuster to block progress on important issues the majority of voters’ support, stressing they can’t allow anyone to use it to block democracy-saving efforts and that every American who cares about the survival of the US most important institutions should support that and Biden’s call as well.
To make sure pending voting rights legislation gets called for a vote, Biden has called for modifying Senate rules as necessary and asked Congress in his speech in Atlanta – along with Vice President Harris- to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the Freedom to Vote Act.
Calling the US Senate a shell of its former self, Biden said he supported changing the Senate rules to pass voting and elections reform bills.
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