Stacey Abrams, of the voting rights group Fair Fight, was in a couple of classrooms, including Meet the Press with Chuck Todd. He asked if HR-1, the House's massive voting-rights-plus-more bill, should be pared down to get past Senate filibuster rules, or if the focus should be on eliminating the filibuster.
Abrams said the US Constitution gives the House and Senate "the sole responsibility... to regulate the time, place and manner of elections." She'd rather have Republicans join the fight, but if not, "I would say that an exemption to the filibuster for the purposes of protecting our democracy is not only logical, it is fundamental to who we are."
She said "the whole of our democracy" needs to be defended and protected, and that
the Senate has to believe it has the responsibility and the ability to act. And that is why my focus is on making certain that the exemption to the filibuster be the necessary front and center conversation, so we can get something done to protect our democracy.
Of the Georgia bills, Abrams said they're not about protecting the right to vote, the bills "are nothing more than a pretext for returning to Jim Crow and stopping voters that they (don't) want to hear from."
Georgia's Lt. Gov Geoff Duncan was next. He said
Republicans don't need election reform to win. We need leadership. I think there’s millions of Republicans waking up around the country that are realizing that Donald Trump's divisive tone and strategy is unwinnable in forward-looking elections. We need real leadership. We need new focus, a GOP 2.0 that includes moderates in the middle to get us to the next election cycle.
He's "one of those Republicans that want more people to vote." He believes Republican ideas help people, that "an overwhelming number of Americans" think the Rs are better on the economy, and keeping communities and the country safe, and so he wants more voters, not fewer.
You know, this started shortly after the November elections, when all the misinformation started flying up. And quite honestly, it hurt Republicans in any sort of conversation around election reform. We lost credibility. Those were ten weeks that we can't take back. January 6th was a pivot point for this country and for this party.
Finally, on the investigation into Trump's "possible" interference (we all heard the call, right?), Duncan said, "I think the best thing we can do is to continue to focus ahead on our jobs at hand. And district attorneys and lawyers and whatnot can do their job."
In the CNN SOTU classroom, Jake Tapper talked with Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX) about the nearly 4000 children that are in custody at the southern border, and asked her if what we're seeing now is a "crisis," which is what she called it back in 2019 when there were fewer children in custody.
In a nutshell? No. That was a crisis; what we have today is "an enormous challenge. And it's unacceptable." It's gotten better - she also said pre-COVID, the last time she was there, kids had been in shelters for months, some up to a year, but now it's down to about a month.
Tapper asked her about Mexicans seeing Biden as "the migrant president," according to Mexican President Lopez Obrador, and whether that's helping create the mess at the border. She said focusing on that
... obscures the bigger picture that many of us, myself included, have been talking about for years. The flows -- the flow of humanity ebbs and flows. There - as I mentioned, in April, we began seeing - in April of 2020, under the harshest of conditions, a Trump administration and COVID, we still saw people arriving at our front door.
She believes Biden will "address the root causes of migration," and that we'll keep having the conversation again and again "until we have leaders in this hemisphere who are willing to work together."
George Stephanopoulos talked infrastructure with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on This Week. Pelosi said this has always been bipartisan, "except when they oppose it with a Democratic president, as they did under President Obama, and we had to shrink the package." She's asked her committee chairs to reach across the aisle and find common ground.To
This is about broadband. It's about water systems. It's about mass transit, it’s about good paying jobs all over the country. It’s also about schools and housing and the rest. Good paying jobs across the country. And not only that, once those jobs of building are done, it's about promoting commerce, creating good -- so it’s -- the goal is to promote good growth creating good paying jobs as we protect our planet and are fiscally sound.
To pay for it, taxes are in the mix, along with several other options, because "we want to be fiscally sound as we go forward."
And this is job creating which creates revenue that comes back to the Treasury, unlike what the Republicans did with their tax scam in 2017 which gave 83 percent of the benefits to the top 1 percent and indebted our children to the tune of nearly $1.9 trillion -- recognize the figure, in debt, added to the national debt. So they should be the last people to be talking about what is too expensive for the American people as we meet their needs.
Always so helpful, the Speaker, isn't she?
We'll end where we started, with the filibuster. Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) also talked with George, and said there's nothing wrong with the 'talking filibuster,' when a Senator had to hold the floor to block a vote. The issue is "how many votes does it take to get moving forward with legislation?"
You know, we have a 50/50 Senate. That's what the American people sent to Washington with the vice president breaking the tie. You know, George, that ought to be a mandate to move to the middle. So we ought to do things that actually can get broad, bipartisan support like the infrastructure bill that came out of my committee last time. That's the best way to get things done. If you get things that are one vote, and the vice president breaking a tie, harder for America to buy into that thing. The major pieces of legislation for our country historically have been done in a broad, bipartisan way.
Good lord, I'm thinking like Barrasso? Which one of us has lost our way? George Tried to bring him back to the filibuster, and got basically the same answer.
I don't mind talking. I think the people ought to be able to stand and express their views. The question is, is it 50 votes or 51, or is it 60? And the current number is 60. We've had this going on now for over a century. And the idea is to get bipartisan buy-in to bills. If there are parts that are very partisan, they ought to be left out. Focus on the areas on which we can agree. On most items, I think you can agree on 80 percent of the things. So let's leave out the 20 percent which are the hot button issues and move the country forward on issues on which we agree.
What's your takeaway from this week's classroom visits?
See you around campus - I'll be wearing a mask, still and hope you will be, too.
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