New York — Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) blasted Senate Democrats on Thursday for refusing to pass gun-control measures and called for changes to the filibuster to enable gun legislation by the Democratic-led House to reach the floor.
Speaking to her constituents of New York’s 14th congressional district during a town hall, Ocasio-Cortez said “we need to finish the job” on gun control and pass measures that have cleared the House. These include H.R. 8 — a measure that would make background checks stricter — as well as H.R. 1808, which would ban “semiautomatic assault weapons,” and H.R. 1454, which would expand the definition of firearms to include custom-built firearms (termed “ghost guns”).
Ocasio-Cortez said the bills had not advanced in the Senate because of Democratic senators Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), who have refused to consider reforms to the Senate cloture (filibuster) rule, which requires 60 votes to limit debate and move to a vote on nonbudgetary legislation. She added that “a carve-out on the filibuster for H.R. 8” was necessary, allowing it to be passed without reaching the 60-vote threshold.
“This is not just a Republican problem. We have obstructionists,” she said of her own party in a reference to Manchin and Sinema, before accusing them of letting “blood spill” in favor of the filibuster. “All this blood is spilling, and yet the filibuster is more important” to the two senators, she said.
“They are complicit in the violence,” she added, “and I will not make excuses for Democratic senators who refuse to act on this issue.” Ocasio-Cortez then repeated her call for the Senate to “eliminate or amend” the filibuster.
Ocasio-Cortez also took aim at Manchin’s response to the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday. After attending a bipartisan meeting on gun legislation, he reportedly said in relation to proposals on gun reform that “it feels different right now,” according to Axios‘s Alayna Treene, an apparent departure from his previous opposition to the House’s gun legislation. Citing these comments, she said of Manchin and Sinema: “They said the same thing after Parkland and the same thing after Sandy Hook. . . . I’m sick of them.”
Moreover, Ocasio-Cortez accused both senators, as well as other Democrats, of receiving “dark money” from political interest groups to maintain the Senate’s filibuster rules. In reference to the shooting at Robb Elementary School, she said “19 babies’ lives” were “not worth the dark money they are receiving to preserve the filibuster; I want to say that very directly.”
According to reporting by the New York Times, both Manchin and Sinema have received money from billionaire donors linked to the firearms industry and National Rifle Association, which have opposed gun restrictions proposed by congressional Democrats. At the time of this writing, neither Manchin’s nor Sinema’s offices had responded to National Review’s requests for comment.
During her town hall, Ocasio-Cortez addressed a variety of topics, including inflation, congressional redistricting in New York, and Puerto Rican statehood. She announced that she would be visiting Puerto Rico to conduct “field hearings” on legislation to approve a binding plebiscite for the territory, to seek either statehood or independence from the United States.
Responding to a question about controlling inflation, she said inflation has been “out of control” this year. However, she said the “actual inflation rate” should be measured as “around 3 percent,” instead of the 8.5 percent reflected in the latest Consumer Price Index statistics, because corporations are “taking advantage” of current economic conditions to raise prices.