House Democrats pass 2 voting-rights bills, setting up a showdown in the Senate

• House Democrats passed two voting-rights bills on Thursday morning, setting up a Senate showdown.
• The bills were passed as an amendment to an unrelated NASA bill to fast-track consideration.

House Democrats passed a pair of voting-rights bills on Thursday morning, setting up a showdown in the US Senate over the legislation — and the Senate's own rules.

Three previous voting-rights and democracy-reform bills that Democrats advanced in 2021 failed to even get a debate in the US Senate because of the filibuster rules. But this time around, congressional Democrats are deploying some unique procedural tactics to fast-track consideration of the bills in the Senate and ensure they get a debate on the Senate floor.

House Democrats voted along party lines to concur with an amendment to attach the two voting-rights bills to the text of an unrelated NASA bill. They intend to send it as a "message" to the upper chamber.

The new bill attached to the NASA measure, named the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, combines two pieces of major voting-rights legislation: the Freedom to Vote Act, a sweeping voting-rights and democracy-reform bill, and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, a bill that would refortify key parts of the Voting Rights Act that have been struck down or weakened by federal courts.

Under the Senate filibuster rules, most legislation requires 60 votes to even proceed to a debate. But because the NASA legislation has already been considered by both chambers, the voting-rights amendment is being sent as a message. Therefore it only requires a simple majority of 51 votes to advance to debate in the Senate.

But after the debate, the legislation itself would still require 60 votes to pass — an unlikely outcome in a Senate divided between 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans. All 50 Senate Republicans voted to block debate on the Freedom to Vote Act in October, and only one Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, moved to proceed to debate on the John Lewis bill.

If Senate Republicans block the legislation itself, as expected, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he would force a vote on changes to the Senate's rules.

Democrats are discussing reforms to the Senate filibuster, such as having a special carve-out to allow the chamber to pass voting-rights legislation with a simple majority, returning to the talking filibuster, and putting the burden on the minority party to hold a filibuster on the Senate floor rather than placing the onus on the majority to break the filibuster.

But the entire caucus is still a ways off from coming to an agreement.

"I wish we were closer," Sen. Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat, told reporters on Wednesday. "We're not at the point where we're ready for prime time."

Two swing Democrats, in particular, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have consistently opposed a carve-out. Manchin is also skeptical of making changes to the Senate's rules solely along party lines.

President Joe Biden, who endorsed changing the filibuster rules in a Tuesday speech in Atlanta, is set to attend Democrats' weekly caucus meeting on Thursday. But it's unclear whether he'll be able to sway the holdouts or bring the caucus any closer to a consensus.