The House voted to codify marriage equality Tuesday, giving gay and interracial marriages federal protections in the Respect for Marriage Act. The surprise element in the vote was the 47 Republicans who voted with Democrats. Immediately following that vote, Senate Republicans started to volunteer their support for the bill.
That’s brought about a definite change in attitude from Senate Democrats about the utility of these bills. On Tuesday, Majority Whip Dick Durbin was pretty dismissive of the idea of getting those votes on the floor. “We have more priorities than we have time,” he told reporters, adding that cancelling part of the August recess was a possibility, but “it takes all of the Democrats present to make this work.” On the floor Wednesday morning, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said: “I want to bring this bill to the floor and we’re working to get the necessary Senate Republican support to ensure it would pass.”
Great. Now do it for abortion and birth control. Senate Republicans filibustered legislation to codify abortion rights back in May. That was before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, before the full horror of that decision and its consequences were apparent. Republicans need to be forced to vote on that again.
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Republicans need to be forced to vote on protecting the right to use birth control, a topic that has them tied up in knots, as Kerry Eleveld writes. “When Sen. [Joni] Ernst (R-IA), who isn’t even up for reelection this year, waffles three times on contraception rights in the course of a 15-second answer, it worth getting Republicans on record. And if Democrats are able to successfully usher through those critical rights, so much the better.”
The access to contraception bill is the one that will really put Senate Republicans in a bind, as Ernst’s obvious discomfort talking about it demonstrates. They’ve got the extreme forced birther activists who insist that birth control pills are abortion pushing on one side, and the entire rest of society on the other. So that vote in the Senate absolutely has to happen. And yes, cancel recess to do it.
Meanwhile, the Senate is moving forward on the slimmed down competitiveness bill that has been mired in a conference committee between House and Senate for weeks as well as taken hostage by Sen. Mitch McConnell. This version will include subsidies for semiconductor producers in the U.S. and could include some of the funding for science and research that is in the larger bill. The first procedural vote on it happened Tuesday, and it passed 64-34, which means it should overcome the upcoming cloture vote and final passage, possibly next week.
Democrats have also been forced to bow to Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-WV) will. The tremendous Build Back Better climate and economic/social spending plan President Joe Biden introduced last year will be reduced to lowering prescription drug prices and extending expanded Affordable Care Act subsidies for another two years.
It would allow the government to negotiate drug prices for Medicare—an important wedge into reforming the pharmaceutical side of the nation’s ongoing health care crisis—and cap annual out-of-pocket prescription drug costs for Medicare enrollees at $2,000. Those are good things, at least, so Schumer had better have that vote ASAP, before Manchin changes his mind again.
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