Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia warned his fellow Democrats against changing the filibuster rules while lamenting the state of the Senate.
According to The Hill, Manchin went through a long list of reasons he supports the 60-vote threshold for most major legislation while arguing that the pitch from his Democratic colleagues about restoring the Senate is ''simply not true.''
''For the last year,'' Manchin stated, ''my Democratic colleagues have taken to the Senate floor, cable news airwaves, pages of newspapers across the country, and to argue that repealing the filibuster is restoring the vision the founding fathers intended for this deliberate body. My friends, that is simply not true. It's not true.''
The senator added that his fellow Democrats ''would use the nuclear option to override a rule that we have used ourselves, but now seem to find unacceptable.''
Despite Manchin's support of the filibuster, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., vowed in a closed-door caucus, according to reports, ''to change the rules to implement a talking filibuster for voting rights legislation, getting rid of the 60-vote hurdle for that issue.''
While Manchin said he supports the voting rights legislation, ''that's not what we're debating right now. I think we all know that.'' In addition, the Democrats' proposed rule changes would mark a ''fundamental change in the Senate rules that will forever alter the way this body functions.''
''We all talked about how many times rules have changed. We changed them. But we changed them with the rules. We didn't break the rules to change the rules. But all of a sudden now we just can't do it anymore. Just got to blow it up,'' Manchin continued.
It is expected on Wednesday that Republicans will block the Democrats' voting bill, which combines the Freedom to Vote Act, an act that would overhaul federal elections, with the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
Republicans will then use the filibuster to block the legislation.
After that, The Hill reports, ''Schumer is expected to move to change the rules. That will fall short because Democrats need total unity from all of their members but Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., are opposed to the proposal.''
Manchin said that ''eliminating the filibuster would be the easy way out. It wasn't meant to be easy. I cannot support such a perilous course for this nation when elected leaders are sent to Washington to unite our country, not to divide our country.''
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