“No,” Pelosi said. “I have no plans to bring it to the floor.”
However, she did leave wiggle room for the issue to be discussed further through Biden’s SCOTUS “reform” commission.
“I support the president’s commission, to study such a proposal,” Pelosi said. “I don’t know that it is a good idea or a bad idea. I think it’s an idea that should be considered and I think the president is taking the right approach, to have a commission study such a thing. It’s a big step.”
The bill would add four SCOTUS justice seats, bringing the total to 13 justices. The House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler, Subcommittee chair Hank Johnson and freshman Rep. Mondaire Jones co-sponsored the House bill. In the Senate, the bill is being sponsored by Sen. Ed Markey.
West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin and Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema have stated their opposition to court-packing. It would likely face fierce opposition in the Senate.
Biden promised to form the commission on reforming the Supreme Court in October after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, which many took as a sign that he supported court-packing, despite his long track record of opposing it. As a Senator in 2005, he even called court-packing a “power grab.”
It appears that the Democratic Party is merely playing games with its radical base. If there was political support in the Congress for court-packing, Speaker Pelosi wouldn’t hesitate to bring it to the floor out of committee. Instead, Americans are going to be getting more “optics” on politically unpopular ideas, like court-packing and slavery reparations.