Top Republican senator Mitch McConnell has attacked Joe Biden’s push for a voting rights bill, underscoring the difficulty the Democrats face attempting to steer legislation through Congress with a narrow majority.
The US president has called for his party to jettison the Senate’s longstanding “filibuster” rule, which requires 60 of the 100 senators to agree to advance most legislation, a move that McConnell said would irreparably damage the chamber.
“The president’s rant yesterday was incoherent, incorrect and beneath his office,” McConnell said on the Senate floor on Wednesday, referring to Biden’s speech in Atlanta the day before in which he appealed for voting-rights legislation and called Republicans cowardly for not supporting it.
McConnell accused the president of giving “a deliberately divisive speech that was designed to pull our country further apart”.
White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, told reporters the administration was disappointed by McConnell’s opposition to the bill.
“It is even more disappointing that someone who has supported and advocated for voting rights in the past … is on the other side of this argument now,” Psaki said.
Biden plans to make a personal plea to Senate Democrats on Thursday, urging them to agree on changing or eliminating the filibuster so they can pass the voting rights bill.
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