Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer spoke on the Senate floor moments after Republicans voted in unison to not open debate on the Democrats’ signature voting rights and election bill, saying saying GOP opposition was “indefensible” and an “enduring disgrace.”
“Once again, Senate Republicans have signed their names in the ledger of history alongside Donald Trump, the big lie, and voter suppression,” he said.
“To their enduring disgrace, this vote, I’m ashamed to say is further evidence that voter suppression has become part of the official platform of the Republican Party,” he said.
Earlier in his remarks Schumer also suggested his Republican counterpart, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, was deploying the same tactics used by Southern senators to oppose efforts surrounding the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
“The Republican leader uses the language and the logic of the southern senators in the sixties who defended states rights and it is an indefensible position for any senator, any senator, let alone for the minority leader to hold,” he said.
“That is both ridiculous and awful,” he added of Republicans’ opposition to the bill.
Schumer then pledged to continue the fight.
“Republican senators may have prevented us from having a debate on voting rights today but I want to be very clear about one thing, the fight to protect voting rights is not over, by no means,” he said. “In the fight for voting rights, this vote was the starting gun not the finish line.”
