< Schumer insists failed votes on voting rights and filibuster were right thing to do

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Democrats are facing tough choices after their voting rights agenda was blocked by Senate Republicans last night. On top of that, President Biden says his massive agenda for child care, education and climate change will need to be broken up, with some key elements sure to be left behind. One person who has to figure out how to carry that agenda forward is Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. He sat down today with our congressional correspondent Kelsey Snell. They started their conversation with the fracture in the Democratic caucus since Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin followed through on their promise to vote with Republicans last night to protect the filibuster.

KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: So it was clear that the votes you held yesterday on the filibuster and the voting rights were going to fail. So why do it?

CHUCK SCHUMER: This is one of the most important issues facing America - the future of our democracy. The right to vote is sacrosanct, and it's being taken away by legislature after legislature across the country. Senators are here to vote. They should be put on record. And those who are opposed to advancing voting rights and who support suppression of voting rights, the public should know who they are. And these senators have an obligation to let them know who they are. The vote makes that clear, and it will help us move forward.

Let me say this - for people who said, well, you knew you might not get the votes, well, that's like telling John Lewis, don't go over the Pettus Bridge because you don't know what's going to happen there or Martin Luther King not to involve himself in his crusades. This is perhaps the most important issue we face. Many people feel it is. And we're not going to slide it off the table. We're not going to say never mind. This helps us advance the cause. Now the public knows where people stand. I think those who voted against it will feel a lot of heat.

SNELL: Well, speaking of that, there are people in your party who think Senators Manchin and Sinema should be punished for voting with Republicans. You know, this is creating a lot of anger within your base and people you need to have show up and vote in November. So was it a mistake to put these senators on the record aligning with Republicans?

SCHUMER: Not at all. In fact, the very people who you're talking about and not just, you know, quote, "the hard left base," but all of the civil rights movement, the union movement, the environmental movement, even the pro-choice movement, which had had a different position in the past, said we must have them vote. And I think that was the right thing to do.

SNELL: Well, one of the things that President Biden said in his press conference yesterday is that he's learned over the past year that the public doesn't want him to be president senator. They want him to be president and senators to be senators. Has he effectively used the power of his office so far or has he spent too much time up here negotiating with senators as equals?

SCHUMER: The bottom line is on the issue of voting rights, which we're talking about, he has made it clear how he felt. He gave three very powerful speeches. He spoke individually to Senators Manchin and Sinema. So he's working alongside us because both of us feel that this is a vital issue to the republic. This is what people have died for. The wellspring of our democracy is allowing people to vote. Something interesting - I'm reading the biography of Grant. And the white Southerners, the No. 1 thing they wanted to prevent the newly freed slaves from getting was the right to vote because they knew vote was power, vote could direct the government to help you, vote could change the course of where the country goes. So the vote is vital, vital, vital. And I think that Joe Biden, myself and almost every one of my Senate colleagues feels that way.

SNELL: Well, you are marking your own anniversary right now. It's your first anniversary as majority leader. I'm wondering in that time, major pieces of the president's agenda have passed the House but not the Senate. Do you take responsibility for that? Is there anything you could have done differently?

SCHUMER: Well, look, we worked very hard. We got a lot done. The ARP bill is one of the most progressive and important pieces of legislation in decades. We've put more judges in. These are lifetime appointments. You know, Donald Trump stacked the bench with hard-right judges, nasty people some of them. And we have undone a lot of it already. We put more judges in office in the first year of a president's term or a majority leader's term than anyone since 40 or 50 years. We got a big bipartisan bill done, the bipartisan infrastructure bill done and many other things as well. Are we going to continue to fight on voting rights? Yes. And by forcing people to vote, we have moved that a step forward.

That is the overwhelming view of my caucus and the overwhelming view of all of us on the side of voting rights, not just the civil rights community, although they had taken the lead, but all of the - the union community, the environmental community, the community that wants to keep Roe v. Wade. So this was the right thing to do, and we did the right thing. We've had a successful year. We haven't had it completely successful, but you keep fighting. We're in the week of MLK Day. The inspiration of Dr. King, who never gave up, who didn't let setbacks set him back and who didn't shy from tough fights, even though the outcome was not clear at the beginning, that's our inspiration.

KELLY: Senator Chuck Schumer there, speaking with NPR's Kelsey Snell, who is with me now joining us from the Capitol. Hey, Kelsey.

SNELL: Hi there.

KELLY: All right. So we heard him say Democrats are going to keep fighting. I didn't hear a lot of specifics on what that fight looks like. What does he mean?

SNELL: We don't really know. Right now, we're looking for some information from Democrats about what that fight will look like. You know, the biggest challenge that Schumer and Biden both face is an evenly divided Senate. When I was in his office today, I noticed that he has portraits of the Roosevelts on the walls. Much like Biden. Biden and Schumer share this desire to pass Roosevelt-style transformative policies. But they don't have Roosevelt-sized majorities, even in the House. Democrats lost seats in the last election in 2020. It wasn't as if voters gave them a huge mandate to move forward like this.

KELLY: All true. But I guess my question, again, do we know anything about Schumer, about Democrats' next steps now?

SNELL: Well, Schumer wasn't focused on that. He clearly wanted to defend the choices and the approach that he took. And that was a lot of, you know, similar talk to what we heard from President Biden yesterday. And he didn't really engage with whether Biden's approach was the right kind of way to move the agenda forward. He also didn't say what he personally plans to do differently going forward.

KELLY: NPR congressional correspondent Kelsey Snell, thanks for sharing the interview with us.

SNELL: Thanks for having me.

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