As Midterms Near, Biden Warns Republicans Seek to Dismantle Democratic Legislation
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Vice President Joe Biden took to Facebook over the weekend, warning Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives that they are working to undermine the will of the American people by using an obscure budget procedural move called the “reconciliation” process.
He wrote:
“When Republicans seek to destroy the will of the American people through the legislative filibuster, their only objective is to prevent us from making the tough choices we must face in order to build a stronger middle class and a brighter future for our children. I have heard from countless middle class American families who are struggling to make ends meet and who are facing the cruel reality of wage stagnation. Their lives are being irreversibly changed by the cruel Republican tax scheme that hits hard and often. I’m not a tax expert, but I do know you’ll see that raising taxes on the middle class will not save us from the threat of job loss. We need to invest in our children and in our families, not in the tax cuts for billionaires that the Republicans have in store for the middle class and working families.”
Biden has a long history of warning about the perils of the legislative filibuster. In 2013, he warned that it is “becoming a far too common tool for obstruction of progress in Congress, a tool that plays into the hands of the extremists who want to stop progress. And, we have to be careful that it doesn’t become a weapon in the hands of the Republicans.”
The Senate has taken this strategy to its logical conclusion, with Republicans using the parliamentary tool of the filibuster to prevent the Senate from passing President Obama’s landmark healthcare reform in 2010 and a slew of other Democratic initiatives since then.
“The fact is, without a Democratic majority, the legislative filibuster is in the Republican toolbox,” Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) warned last year. “And this is why what we did in 2013 is the one thing that might salvage this Senate.”
But how did the GOP get away with the tactic in the first place?
Biden is right that Republicans have a political interest in limiting the number