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The funniest thing is watching Reid and McConnell use each other's arguments from 8 years ago.
Does Reid drop the nuclear option to change senate rules wrt the use of the filibuster for executive non-judicial nominations?
yes/no?
if yes, is this a good thing iyo?
Last edited by Th'Pusher; 07-15-2013 at 09:33 PM.
The funniest thing is watching Reid and McConnell use each other's arguments from 8 years ago.
51 votes is Cons utional, which of you strict originalists is against?
51 would be only for Presidential appointments.
60 is obviously, esp with the treasonous, destructive obstructionism of the Repugs/tea baggers, nothing but an invitation to gridlock dictated by the minority.
Just ask Reid about his support for such a move back in 2006.
LOL...
Most people don't even realize it I bet.
The house got rid of the filibuster quite a long time ago. If they want to force a super majority on passing legislation then they should change the deciding vote to that standard and get rid of the gimmick.
Top Conservative Pollster Says Plurality Supports Abolishing The Filibuster
Even Rasmussen Reports, a conservative pollster that’s been widely criticized for publishing results that skew Republican, finds little support for maintaining Senate Republicans’ current power to block progress in the Senate.
According to the Republican-leaning pollster, which showed Mitt Romney winning several states in 2012 that he actually lost by significant margins, 44 percent of likely voters “want to change the Senate results so that a vote must be held whenever a majority of senators agrees” to a measure. Just 38 percent oppose effectively eliminating filibusters.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/201...he-filibuster/
Looks like they came up with a compromise so no nukes today:
Senators have reached a tentative deal to avert the “nuclear option” on filibuster rules.
Under the proposal, which the White House has not yet agreed to, President Barack Obama would pull two nominees to the National Labor Relations Board – Sharon Block and Richard Griffin – and replace them with two nominees who could receive Senate votes quickly.
Votes on the other five nominees would be allowed to go forward – including those of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Gina McCarthy as EPA administrator and Thomas Perez as Labor secretary.
Just before noon, the Senate voted to move forward with the Cordray nomination with 71 votes — well over the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster — a sign that lawmakers were already backing away from the brink of the historic rules changes.
“I think it is going to be something that is good for the Senate,” Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Tuesday morning before the Cordray vote. “It is a compromise, and I think we get what we want, they get what they want. Not a bad deal.”
It was not immediately clear what conditions or timeline would be placed on the NLRB nominees or other votes. Democrats hope any replacement nominees for Block and Griffin could be voted on by the end of the month, although it’s not clear they can be vetted by that time.
Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) met Tuesday morning, but at the time were unable to reach a deal on the nuclear option as McConnell wouldn’t agree not to filibuster future nominations. Reid will not pull the nuclear option off the table under those cir stances, sources said.
http://m.politico.com/iphone/story/0713/94259.html
"Sharon Block and Richard Griffin – and replace them with two nominees who could receive Senate votes quickly."
so the gutless, spineless Dems caved. why would the 2 new, unnamed nominees be voted on quickly while Block and Griffin couldn't be?
VRWC/UCA/Repugs want to gut the NLRB as part of their War on Employees.
Reid will go down as one of he more inept majority leaders in history. In the face of unprecedented gridlock, he did nothing to alleviate the situation. I would bet the house that Republicans destroy the filibuster as soon as they regain power.
Is this the same as the newclur option?
Where McConnell Is Still Winning
At the end of the day, the 60-vote Senate is still the norm. The minority retains the ability to obstruct with no credible nuclear threat when it comes to most matters.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Democrats proved this week they have the leverage to make sure a president's nominees to executive positions can be confirmed with a 51-vote majority. But in conversations with TPM during recent weeks, pro-reform Democrats and progressives privately conceded that they lack the votes to scale back the minority's veto power over judicial nominations or bills.
President Obama has faced more delays and obstruction on his judicial nominees than any of the last five presidents, according to a recent nonpartisan congressional report. Pro-reform sources say they lack the votes to put an end to filibusters of potential judges, in part because pro-choice Democrats fear that a future GOP president may fill the courts with conservative judges that they'd be powerless to stop from rolling back abortion rights.
When Reid was asked Tuesday afternoon about the fate of three pending nominees to the powerful D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, he was cir spect.
"We'll take those one at a time. We're talking about executive nominees," he said. "Those are going through the process but we'll see. ... I think there's a good feeling in the Senate."
And legislation can continue to be filibustered by Republicans as a matter of course -- sometimes to be thwarted entirely (such as the DREAM Act of 2010 and gun control legislation of 2013) and sometimes to be used as leverage to extract concessions. That remains a huge redefinition of the Senate minority's power that has reached unprecedented heights under McConnell, and which Democrats still have no answer to.
Under McConnell, the use of the filibuster -- as measured by cloture motions by the majority leader, which are filed under threat of a filibuster -- grew from roughly 70 per Congress to roughly 140 per Congress, according to the official Senate record. It eased to 115 in 2011-2010 after Republicans took control of the House.
Gregory Koger, a political science professor at the University of Miami, explained in a recent article that "obstruction is so ins utionalized in the modern Senate that labeling some action a 'filibuster' is like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500."
That reality has hardly changed.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2...ng-the-war.php
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