Senate Democrats took the dramatic step Thursday of eliminating filibusters for most nominations by presidents, a power play they said was necessary to fix a broken system but one that Republicans said will only rupture it further.<\/span>
<\/span>Democrats used a rare parliamentary move to change the rules so that federal judicial nominees and executive-office appointments can advance to confirmation votes by a simple majority of senators, rather than the 60-vote supermajority that has been the standard for nearly four decades.<\/span>
<\/span>The immediate rationale for the move was to allow the confirmation of three picks by President Obama to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit \u2014 the most recent examples of what Democrats have long considered unreasonably partisan obstruction by Republicans.<\/span>
<\/span>In the long term, the rule change represents a substantial power shift in a chamber that for more than two centuries has prided itself on affording more rights to the minority party than any other legislative body in the world. Now, a president whose party holds the majority in the Senate is virtually assured of having his nominees approved, with far less opportunity for political obstruction.<\/span>
<\/span>The main combatants Thursday were the chamber\u2019s two chiefs, Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who have clashed for several years over Republican filibusters of Obama\u2019s agenda and nominees.<\/span>
<\/span>Reid said the chamber \u201cmust evolve\u201d beyond parliamentary roadblocks. \u201cThe American people believe the Senate is broken, and I believe the American people are right,\u201d he said, adding: \u201cIt\u2019s time to get the Senate working again.\u201d<\/span>
<\/span>McConnell linked the rule change to the methods used to approve Obama\u2019s health-care law solely with Democratic votes. The normally reserved GOP leader paced at his desk during his speech, often turning his back to Democrats to address only his fellow Republicans.<\/span>
<\/span>\u201cIt\u2019s a sad day in the history of the Senate,\u201d McConnell told reporters, calling the move a Democratic \u201cpower grab.\u201d<\/span>
<\/span>The clash ended with a vote nearly as partisan as the times \u2014 52 to 48, with all but three Democrats backing the move and every Republican opposing it.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nI tend to think good riddance to the filibuster. <\/p>\n
It is an accident of history, and it has generally ill-served the American people.<\/p>\n
Here’s hoping that it gets further dismantled as time goes on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I said that I did not believe that Reid of the Democrats would ever invoke the nuclear option, no matter how awful the Republicans were. I was wrong: Senate Democrats took the dramatic step Thursday of eliminating filibusters for most nominations by presidents, a power play they said was necessary to fix a broken system …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1136,998,1092,972,1020],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-congress","category-culture","category-justice","category-legislation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186670"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186670\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}