delivering marks slamming. yesterday specifically to change senate rules. as we reported start of the hour, president biden will head to capitol hill tomorrow to discuss potential changes trying to find a bath forward. i m joined now by a senate democrat who will be in that meeting tomorrow and somebody who has been trying to change filibuster i d argue for years. i want to say senator jeff merkley democrat from oregon pretty much since the day you got here? that s right, chuck. just from the moment i arrived and saw the senate deteriorated as i was here as a younger individual before i returned home to oregon. it has only gotten worse since. before we get to the present challenge here. explain why i ll be honest, not a mystery where joe manchin was on this issue and where at the start of the senate where somewhere between 4 and 6
timing is important on this matter. so that leaves us back at the question of what is the democrat s end game? moments ago the white house confirmed that president biden will attend the caucus lunch to discuss the push to pass voting rights and potential changes to senate rules. right now members of the congressional black caucus are about to hold a news conference as the progressive base grows increasingly frustrated with the lack of action on this issue. the big questions about the path forward for the party. how do they get stuck arguing amongst themselves so much about procedure instead of hammering home the actual issue? did they wait too long to turn their focus to voting rights? should they have made some filibuster changes right at the beginning? make it the talking filibuster at first and prove to manchin and sinema if changes could actually matter. what about this potential side deal being cooked up? democrats want to pass something on this issue even if it doesn t satisfy
modernize the ports and that includes railways like at the port of long beach. really the supply chain issues, although the holiday season has passed, continue to be very challenging. i actually asked secretary buttigieg exactly when this will end. he says he doesn t have a crystal ball and this is more of what he said to me. so, if you were to explain to a shopper where the biggest pain point is right now, is it here at the ports? is it on the railways? is it in the warehouses? where is it? the truth is if you see a ship off shore here waiting for a chance to unload its goods, there s a good chance the reasons have to do with something 1,000 miles inland like an issue with labor capacity in trucking. right now we have something like 300,000 truck drivers leaving that job every single year. i asked him then how much should truckers be paid to attract truckers back on to the roadways and he says that truckers ought to be paid for
voting rights bills, debate them, vote, let the majority prevail. i m making it clear to protect our democracy i support changing the senate rules. whichever way they need to be changed to prevent a minority of senators from blocking action on voting rights. senate leader schumer told reporters this morning that following the president s speech, members of his caucus had lengthy meetings with the two key democratic hold outs. joe manchin and kyrsten sinema. those talks did not yield any breakthroughs leading towards careening towards failure on an issue they repeatedly said that failure is not an option. we are trying to come to a place. we re not there yet. i wouldn t want anybody to think this was easy. if those two senators won t guarantee senators the votes, will you still put that on the floor? it is my understanding it will be a vote. senators are elected to vote and
you know, we can debate whether harry reid s decision to push the envelope on all judges except supreme court, right. he took it one place and mitch mcconnell said, okay, fine, i m going with supreme court. this isn t a new issue. how does she respond to that when you say it s already happened? we ll have to leave it to her how she responds. but my case here is that mitch mcconnell really likes the current situation because his top priorities is simple majority because that s the court and that is tax cuts. and he s twice changed the rules to make tax cuts a simple majority. if there is another top priority that comes along and he decides that not leaving reproductive rights to the courts or to the states and he wants to do it nationally and his base pushes for that, then he would do it on that. but the fact is he s got the perfect situation where his