When they did appear, it was to rail against the legislation and Democrats’ portrayal of its opponents as bigots trying to enable voting restrictions aimed at people of color.
“I am not a racist,” said Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Senate Republican.
The impasse has led to intensifying calls to unilaterally change filibuster rules so Democrats can bulldoze over Republicans’ objections. But at least two Democrats, Ms. Sinema and Mr. Manchin, have made clear they will not do so, even though they support the legislation, a stance that has infuriated some of their colleagues.
“If you’re prepared to vote for the bill, why are you wasting everybody’s time and not voting for the rule change that allows us to pass the bill?” asked Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont. “It’s like inviting somebody to lunch, putting out a great spread, and saying, ‘You can’t eat.’”
Mr. Manchin took to the Senate floor on Wednesday afternoon to defend his position, even as Mr. Biden lamented in his news conference at the White House that Republicans had stalled his legislative agenda, including the voting rights measure. The West Virginian said he wholeheartedly supported the bill itself, but not his party’s effort to change the rules to push it through, which he said amounted to a bid to “break the rules to change the rules.”
“I cannot be a party to that,” Mr. Manchin said, adding that scrapping the filibuster “would be the easy way out — it wasn’t meant to be easy.”
Republicans strongly pushed back on the effort as well. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, reiterated his threat that Republicans would use their power to virtually shut down the Senate should Democrats successfully execute what is known as the “nuclear option” and gut the filibuster.
“The Senate in nuclear winter would not be a hospitable place,” he warned.
