Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin said he would vote against court-packing and eliminating the Senate filibuster during a Monday evening appearance on Fox News’ “Special Report with Bret Baier.”
While President-elect Joe Biden won a narrow election last week, Republicans gained seats in the House of Representatives and managed to hold onto tightly contested Senate seats in Maine, Iowa, and Montana, and look likely to keep seats in North Carolina and Alaska.
Two January runoff races in Georgia will determine whether the GOP holds the Senate or Democrats have a 50/50 tie with soon-to-be Vice President Kamala Harris as a tiebreaker.
Concerns about Democratic threats to add Supreme Court seats and abolish the Senate filibuster were highlighted when Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said, “Now we take Georgia, then we change the world” at a New York City rally over the weekend.
“What do you tell people about that and concerned about that considering all we’ve heard about the progressive agenda?” Fox News anchor Bret Baier asked Manchin.
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“Well, there’s a lot of people that are concerned, there’s a lot of fear tactics being used right now,” Manchin responded before explaining that it would only take one Democratic senator to abstain from voting in order to defeat a bill in a 50/50 Senate.
“So I commit to you tonight and I commit to all of your viewers and everyone else that’s watching, I want to allay those fears, I want to rest those fears for you right now because when they talk about whether it be packing the courts or ending the filibuster, I will not vote to do that,” he continued. “I will not vote to pack the courts and I will not vote to end the filibuster.”
Manchin went on to describe the “unique” position of the U.S. Senate as a “deliberate body.”
“I want to lay those fears to rest, that that won’t happen because I will not be the 50th Democrat voting to end that filibuster or to basically stack the court,” he added. (RELATED: Dana Perino Pans Schumer’s Statement On Georgia Runoff: ‘A Lot More Like Don Quixote Than General Sherman’)
The West Virginia senator also expressed opposition to court-packing and eliminating the filibuster before the election.
