There will be support from Senate Democrats to stop the passage of H.R. 1, the legislation that sets sweeping nationwide election reforms, as long as the 60-vote requirement for passing the bill remains in place, Sen. Chuck Grassley said Monday.
"Don't forget the Senate has always had for 240 years, a supermajority to stop debate," the Iowa Republican said on Fox Business' "Mornings With Maria." "Let's go to the Constitution on this voting rights act. The Constitution makes very clear that state legislatures set voting and dates of elections. With this, you would have federal government preempt every one of the 50 state laws and they are all different to some extent except when you have a uniform date for federal elections. Do we want to preempt the constitutional requirements and have the federal government take it over? I would say no."
Meanwhile, the 2020 election had the largest voter turnout in the nation's history, said Grassley, both for former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden.
"So what is wrong?' said Grassley. "Hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Meanwhile, the latest round of coronavirus stimulus legislation could have been passed a month ago with bipartisan support at a "third of the cost" of the $1.9 trillion bill coming up for a final vote before the House Tuesday had a more targeted approach been approved, Grassley said.
"We had 48 out of 49 Republicans vote for a package that was needed," the Iowa Republican told show anchor Maria Bartiromo, adding that the "two-thirds" of the bill that ended up in its final version is "just a wish list for a lot of liberal things that Democrats couldn't accomplish otherwise."
Grassley also discussed last week's Senate Judiciary Committee testimony from FBI Director Christopher Wray, saying that he still wants to make sure the agency is not only examining extremists from the right, but also from the left.
"They've got to look at left-wing extremists that is best represented by what happened last summer in all the big cities of America where we had burning, looting, rioting," said Grassley, noting that the $2.5 million in damages to the federal courthouse in Portland, Ore., was "about equal" to the damages at the Capitol.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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