Biden Calls Voting Rights Bills 'Turning Point,' Visits Atlanta To Push For Senate To Pass

ATLANTA, GA — President Joe Biden vowed to support changes to U.S. Senate rules that would allow a simple majority to pass a pair of voting rights bills.

"Today, I'm making it clear. To protect our democracy, I support changing the Senate rules, whichever way they need to be changed to prevent a minority of senators from blocking action on voting rights," Biden said.

Tuesday, amid coughs as he spoke from an outdoor stage in a 40-degree Atlanta afternoon, Biden delivered a fiery charge to Republican senators blocking the Freedom To Vote Act and the U.S. Rep. John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act from passing into law. And as he challenged GOP lawmakers, he questioned whether they would choose the side of 1960s-era Civil Rights heroes or the segregationists who opposed them and the rights of all to vote.

"Do you want to be on the side of Dr. (Martin Luther King Jr.) or George Wallace?" Biden said, pounding on the lectern. "Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Will you stand against voter suppression? Yes or no? Will you stand to lay against election subversion?"

He also reminded them that the original rules of the filibuster required more effort than just saying a senator wanted to filibuster a bill.

"When it was used, senators traditionally used to have to stand and speak at their desk however long it took," Biden said. "And sometimes it took hours, and when they sat down and no one immediately stood up, anyone could call for a vote or the debate ended, but that doesn't happen today. Senators no longer even have to speak one word. The filibuster is not used by Republicans to bring the Senate together but to pull it further apart. Filibusters are weaponized and abused."

Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris arrived at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport early Tuesday afternoon and were greeted by Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens and his daughter along and a number of local and state elected officials and supporters.

They then headed to the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change to lay a wreath at the tombs of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, with their children, Berniece King, Yolanda King and Martin Luther King III, and his wife Arndrea Waters King. Afterward, the president and vice president walked to the nearby Historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. was the pastor and from where he delivered his famous “Been To The Mountaintop” speech.

Biden and Harris met there with members of Georgia's congressional delegation, which includes the church's senior pastor, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D).

Finally, they traveled to the Atlanta University Center near Downtown Atlanta to give joint addresses on the urgent need for passing legislation protecting voting rights from the nexus points of the campuses of Clark Atlanta University and Morehouse College.

Harris recalled the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol, where some who participated — incited in the eyes of some by then-President Donald Trump and his supporters — sought to halt the certification of the Electoral College results making Biden president. She said that attempt to reverse the will of the people was an effort to subvert law and order.

"Today, the battle is in the hands of the leaders of the American people ... those in particular that the American people sent to the United States Senate," Harris said. "We cannot tell them that we let a Senate rule stand in the way of our most fundamental freedom. They want chaos to reign. We want the people to rule."

Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, whom Biden named last year to be the vice chair of Civic Engagement and Voter Protection for the Democratic National Committee, flew with the president from Washington, D.C., on Tuesday and accompanied him throughout the day.

It is likely that Bottoms’ presence with the presidential cavalcade will be to help smooth over tensions expressed by a coalition of voting rights advocacy groups that last week said Biden and Harris needn’t bother traveling to Atlanta if they couldn’t offer a filibuster-proof plan to get the voting rights legislation intended to protect voting rights — that both passed the House last year — past the Senate.

“The next few days, when these bills come to a vote, will mark a turning point in this nation,” Biden said in an excerpt of his speech released by the White House ahead of Tuesday’s address. “Will we choose democracy over autocracy, light over shadow, justice over injustice? I know where I stand. I will not yield. I will not flinch. I will defend your right to vote and our democracy against all enemies foreign and domestic. And so the question is where will the institution of (the) United States Senate stand?”

United behind Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Republicans are using the Senate’s filibuster rule, which requires a 60-vote supermajority to overcome, to block progress on the Democratic voting bills, according to the Washington Post. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has vowed to pursue changes to the Senate rules in the coming weeks to skirt that opposition, though chances of success now appear faint: He needs all 50 members of his caucus to back any changes, and at least two — Sens. Joe Manchin III (W.VA) and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) — are publicly against eroding the 60-vote threshold.

Biden and Harris will return to Hartsfield-Jackson and board their respective jets to return to Washington, D.C., lifting off before 6 p.m.