Vice President Kamala Harris answered a variety of pressing questions in a CBS News “Face the Nation” interview that aired on Sunday (Dec. 26).
Passing voting rights legislation was one of the many topics Harris discussed on the show. The first African American and Asian American Vice President told “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan that the United States may no longer be looked at as a role model for the world if the voting rights legislation isn’t passed.
“We have been a role model saying, ‘You can see this and aspire to this and reject autocracies and autocratic leadership,’” Harris said. “Right now, we’re about to take ourselves off the map as a role model if we let people destroy one of the most important pillars of a democracy, which is free and fair elections.”
With an ongoing pandemic and so many other issues currently on the minds of Americans, Harris admitted during the broadcast that voting rights “may not feel like an immediate or urgent matter,” for many Americans but “in fact it is,” she said. “The more we have the opportunity to talk about it, the more I think people will see, ‘Yeah, I don’t want an America of the future for my kids to be in an America where we … are suppressing the right of the American people to vote.”
In June, President Joe Biden assigned his vice president the task of leading Democrats in efforts to protect voting rights. Over the summer, she met with Black women leaders, Texas House Democrats, and state officials in Georgia, South Carolina, and Michigan, among others to discuss the issue.
During her sit-down with Brennan, Harris said the Biden administration will do “whatever is necessary” to push for the Senate to take up the voting rights legislation — the For The People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act — but she wouldn’t say whether that meant using the filibuster to do so.
“What I’m saying is that we are going to urge the United States Congress, and we have been, to examine the tools they have available to do what is necessary to fight for and retain the integrity of our voting system in America,” said Harris.
Elsewhere in the interview, the vice president said she doesn’t believe she is being “set up to fail” just because President Biden has given her several tough initiatives to spearhead. “No, I don’t believe I’m being set up to fail,” Harris responded to Brennan’s question.
“I’m the Vice President of the United States,” she continued. “Anything that I handle is because it’s a tough issue, and it couldn’t be handled at some other level. And there are a lot of big, tough issues that need to be addressed, and it has actually been part of my lifelong career to deal with tough issues and this is no different.”
Check out the full interview below:\