WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Angus King (I-Maine) today joined Andrea Mitchell on NBC’s Meet the Press to stress the importance of voting rights, discuss potential Senate reforms to facilitate debate rather than enable obstruction, and highlight the opportunity to create a “GI Bill for the 21st century” through the Build Back Better reconciliation package.

Senator King began the interview by discussing the importance of overcoming obstruction in order to defend America’s democratic system. Senator King is a stalwart supporter of voting rights legislation, and during a Senate floor speech earlier this week called this moment as a “hinge of history” that will shape the future of America’s experiment in self-government.

“I want to talk to you first about the filibuster. You were one of the resisters to going against the filibuster, but this week went for a third time. Republicans blocked even any debate on voting rights. You began to change and say that you might consider alterations to the filibuster,” said Andrea Mitchell. “What are you willing to consider, getting rid of it altogether or having a talking filibuster, which is what they used to do? Where are you now?

“I think what I'm not really ready to say is, let's get rid of [the filibuster] altogether, because I think there are circumstances where it makes sense. So I prefer some alternative to what the present rule is. I'd like to restore the Senate to what it was, where we actually had debates and people had to hold the floor,” said Senator King. “I think some kind of talking filibuster, perhaps a rule that instead of having to have 60 votes to pass something, you'd have to have 41 votes to stop it. So that way, the minority would at least have to show up.”

“One of the problems now is [the minority] don’t even have to show up. They don't have to speak, they don't have to do anything. It just sort of becomes an automatic supermajority requirement, which isn't in the Constitution, and the framers were diametrically opposed to that concept,” Senator King explained. “You know, interestingly, I recently learned this one of the reasons the Articles of Confederation failed back before the Constitution was that it had a supermajority requirement for Congress to do anything, and they ended up not being able to do anything. And so we've got to do something about this, at least when it comes to something as crucial as democracy itself, as voting rights.”

Later in the interview, Senator King and Andrea Mitchell discussed the Build Back Better social infrastructure package still being negotiated as Congress considers legislation that reimagines and supports a thriving 21st century economy.

“Let's talk about the so-called reconciliation of the social spending bills,” continued Andrea Mitchell. “So much focus has been on the trillions of dollars that are being spent and not on what is and what is being cut and not on what is in there. How do you feel right now, for instance, about the millionaires tax?”

“Well, number one, I think you're right. I think one of the mistakes in this has been all the attention has been on what the number is – 3.5 trillion, 2.8 trillion to whatever it is – rather than what's in the bill. Why are we doing this? And you know, I think back Andrea to the 50s, the two most important federal policies of the 50s that propelled us into the prosperity of the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s. There were two: one was the interstate highway system and the other was the GI Bill,” said Senator King. “I talked to a guy just the other day, 96 years old enlisted in the Navy during World War Two. The GI Bill changed his life. He didn't even finish high school, when he enlisted, he came back, finished high school, and went to college. So really what we're talking about is the GI Bill for the 21st century. It's funds for things like child care, for pre-K, for paid family leave, for things that will allow people to go to work. You need a road to get to the job, but in many places, places in Maine and across the country, you need childcare in order to get to that job as well.”

At the close of the interview, Senator King also added context to the current conversation over climate change politics in the United States Congress, touting the progress being made in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on energy efficiency and energy storage.  The work underway in the Committee, said King, will “begin to solve the problem because it really is a crisis facing this country and the world.”

Senator King has long been committed to increasing voter trust and promoting access to the ballot for all registered voters. He was an original cosponsor of the Freedom to Vote Act, and has cosponsored the For the People Act, and Senator Jon Ossoff’s (D-Ga.) Right to Vote Act, which would establish a first-ever statutory right to vote in federal elections — protecting U.S. citizens from laws that make it harder to cast a ballot. Although Senator King has long been skeptical of filibuster reform, he has repeatedly highlighted voting rights as the foundation of American democracy and expressed willingness to adjust rules to protect access to the ballot; in a March op-ed for the Washington Post, he wrote: “all-out opposition to reasonable voting rights protections cannot be enabled by the filibuster; if forced to choose between a Senate rule and democracy itself, I know where I will come down.”