Vice President Kamala Harris, during a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event, said she’s "not going to absolve" senators who oppose the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
"The United States Senate has the opportunity and, I daresay, the responsibility to pass these bills through Congress so the president can sign them. And the resistance to doing that will not deter us from our commitment to getting it done," Harris told volunteers at an event in Washington, D.C. on Monday, according to Fox News.
When asked about Democrat Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., who refused to back President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan and other pieces of the Biden administration’s legislative agenda, Harris replied: "As I've said before, there are 100 members of the United States Senate, and I'm not going to absolve — nor should any of us — absolve any member of the United States Senate from taking on a responsibility to follow through on the oath that they all took to support and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Harris told NBC News last week, when asked about Manchin and Sinema, that "I don’t think anyone should be absolved from the responsibility of preserving and protecting our democracy. Especially when they took an oath to protect and defend our Constitution.”
Harris at the time also said, "When we have the discussion about who’s responsible, I will not absolve the 50 Republicans in the United States Senate from responsibility for upholding one of the most basic and important tenets of our democracy, which is free and fair elections and access to the ballot for all eligible voters.”