The U.S. midterm elections are less than two months away, and Vice President Kamala Harris says she looks forward to casting the tiebreaking vote in Senate on two key issues: voting and reproductive rights.
In remarks made to the Democratic National Committee Saturday, Harris, who is also president of the Senate, acknowledged her record of tiebreaking votes in a single term.
“For me, as Vice President, I’m also president of the Senate. And — in our first year in office, some of the historians here may know I actually broke John Adams’s record of casting the most tiebreaking votes in a single term. How about that? How about that?” she hypothetically asked. “And so, that being the case, I cannot wait to cast the deciding vote to break the filibuster on voting rights and reproductive rights. I cannot wait. Fifty-nine days. Fifty-nine days.”
In an NBC News Meet the Press interview, she affirmed that President Joe Biden would not allow the filibuster to stop him from signing the Women’s Health Protection Act. The Act, should it pass through the Senate majority vote, would protect the right to access abortion care throughout the United States. The Act was introduced at a critical time in America’s history, shortly before the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade on the grounds that the right to abortion was not “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history or tradition.”
Harris added that to pass the bill, Democrats will need to win two more seats to hold on to the Senate. “And then we can put into law the protections of Roe v. Wade,” she said.
Harris has long been a staunch advocate for women’s reproductive rights. At a roundtable discussion she led at the White House complex earlier this week, she noted that “the Supreme Court having made the decision in Dobbs to take a constitutional right that had been recognized, from the people of America – from the women of America – has created a health care crisis.”
