Rep. James Clyburn Says Voting Rights Bills are Not Dead But Are On ‘Life Support’

House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) conceded that the voting rights bills making their way through the House and the Senate are on “life support.”

On CNN’s State of the Union Sunday, anchor Jake Tapper asked Clyburn about the status of the legislation, following declarations from Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) that they do not support sidestepping the filibuster on these bills.

“Are the election reform bills dead, do you think,” Tapper asked Clyburn.

“No, I don’t,” the Congressman replied, before admitting, “They may be on life support.”

Yet Clyburn refused to throw in the towl.

“John Lewis and others did not give up after the ’64 Civil Rights Act,” Clyburn said. “That’s why he got the ’65 Voting Rights Act.”

Earlier in the interview, the South Carolina Democrat took umbrage with Sinema’s Senate floor speech earlier this week in which she came out against going around the filibuster.

“She is not right about that,” Clyburn said. “We just got around the filibuster to raise the debt limit. Why? Because we don’t want to put the full faith and credit of the United States at risk. No one has asked her to eliminate the filibuster. The filibuster’s there for all of these issues that may be policy issues. But when it comes to the constitution of the United States of America, no one person sitting downtown in a spa ought to be able to pick up the telephone and say you are going to put a hold on my ability to vote. And that’s what’s going on here.

“So I wish they would stop that foolishness. Because if we do not protect the vote with everything that we’ve got, we will not have a country to protect going forward.”

Watch above, via CNN.