Tag Archives: Nuclear option

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Going Nuclear


CAP Action War Room

Standing Up to Unprecedented GOP Obstructionism

Republican leaders from the House and Senate got together and plotted on the very night President Obama was first inaugurated and agreed that there would be no cooperation, no compromise, no nothing but unceasing obstruction. And that’s exactly what we’ve seen ever since, whether it’s on legislation, judicial nominations, or other executive branch nominations.

After more than four years of unprecedented obstruction, Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has said enough is enough. He’s previously made two agreements with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to try and get the Senate moving without formally changing the rules, but both times Sen. McConnell failed to keep up his end of the bargain and the Senate remained gridlocked. Some nominees have literally been stalled for years at a time.

Today, Sen. Reid filed cloture on seven Obama nominees, many of whom are to serve in positions that protect workers, consumers, and our clean air and water. If the Republicans still insist on blocking these nominations come Tuesday, Democrats are poised to use the so-called “nuclear option” to eliminate the filibuster on executive branch nominations.

Filibusters would still be allowed on legislation and judicial nominations, but Senate Republicans would no longer be able to paralyze the government by denying the president the ability to fill key vacancies.

This is an important first step toward making the Senate function as our Founding Fathers envisioned it when they specified in the Constitution that only simple majorities were needed to approve both legislation and nominations.

The practical consequences of this decision are huge. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau cannot issue rules in certain areas and do many key tasks unless it has a director. It will be difficult for the president to advance his agenda to combat climate change unless Gina McCarthy is confirmed to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Unless new members are confirmed to the National Labor Relations Board, it will literally cease to function soon — something that will hurt both workers and employers alike.

BOTTOM LINE: Republicans have engaged in years of unprecedented obstructionism and they have only themselves to blame if Democrats are forced to use the “nuclear option” to simply make the Senate function more like the Constitution says it should. Interestingly, many of the Republican Senators decrying this potential rules reform today argued vehemently in favor of it just eight short years ago.

Evening Brief: Important Stories That You Might’ve Missed

Virginia GOP gubernatorial candidate says health insurance should not cover check-ups or physicals.

House Republicans pass cruel Farm Bill that dropped all funding for food stamps.

Colorado counties want to secede and form a new petro-state with lax environmental rules.

No, the Department of Justice did not organize Trayvon Martin rallies.

As Alabama cuts benefits, desperate man “robs” bank in order to get food, shelter.

Mitch McConnell’s Kentucky.

Brazilian Attorney General challenges constitutionality of World Cup tax exemption.

What do motorcycles and abortion have in common?

Texas women will be forced to turn to “flea market abortions.”

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We didn’t win on filibuster reform, but three senators fought hard


 Tell Sens. Merkley, Udall and Harkin: Thank you for showing what real leadership looks like on filibuster reform.

http://act.credoaction.com/r/?r=6896&id=15715-2591629-a2G1Mzx&t=1

These three champions of filibuster reform deserve recognition for their leadership.

 Clicking here will automatically add your name to this petition to Sens. Tom Udall, Tom Harkin and Jeff Merkley:

“Thank you for showing what real leadership looks like on filibuster reform. We support you in the continuing fight to fix the Senate.”

  The end game for Senate rules reform has become clear, and it’s not pretty.

Despite the best efforts of Senators Merkley, Tom Udall and Harkin, in the near future we’re likely to see only a weak, bipartisan gesture towards Senate reform. At most there will be a few minor tweaks to how the Senate is run without any attempt to address its underlying dysfunction.

While disappointed, we cannot and will not stop fighting for reform as long as the Senate remains a place where good legislation goes to die. The stakes are simply too high.

And as we recommit to this fight, we should recognize the tremendous effort by Democratic champions for filibuster reform, particularly Sens. Tom Udall, Jeff Merkley and Tom Harkin to put this issue on the table.

Tell Sens. Merkley, Udall and Harkin: Thank you for showing what real leadership looks like on filibuster reform. Click here to automatically add your name to the petition.

http://act.credoaction.com/r/?r=6897&id=15715-2591629-a2G1Mzx&t=9

By all accounts, the overwhelming majority of Senate Democrats supported the move known as the “Constitutional Option” to fix the filibuster and other Senate rules by majority vote. This would allow Democrats to change the rules with 51 votes.

However, the Constitutional Option was only available on the first “legislative day” of a new session of Congress (a technical term that does not correspond to a calendar day).

When the Senate adjourned on Tuesday night, the first legislative day ended, and the Democrats lost their only opportunity in this session of Congress to pass Senate rules reform with a simple majority vote. Any rules changes in this Congress now face a 2/3rds supermajority requirement to pass, and nothing significant will have the votes to overcome that threshold.

The inability of the Democrats to capitalize on this opportunity is a substantive failure for all of us who wanted to see Senate reform enacted any time soon. But even more than that, it demonstrates a monumental failure of leadership by the top Democrats in the Senate.

Democratic leaders like Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer have time and again blamed Republican filibusters for their inability to move the Democratic legislative agenda through the Senate.

This was a sentiment shared by their colleagues. Just a month ago, Democrats in the Senate were so fed up with the endless abuse of the filibuster by Republicans that every single returning senator in the Democratic caucus signed a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid about the need for rules reform.

However, a handful of reluctant Democrats (we’ve been told as few as six or seven) were unwilling to support the Constitutional Option. And Democratic leadership decided it would rather negotiate with Republicans than bring the caucus into line.

Nominally, these holdout Democrats were worried about setting a precedent for the Republicans — under the false notion that not taking action when they had the chance would make Republicans hesitant to change the rules to their own advantage when they eventually regain the majority.

In essence, these weak-kneed Democrats were willing to forfeit any chance at governance in the next two years, including giving up a reasonable chance to address the crisis in the judiciary and end the Republicans hostage-taking approach to judicial appointments. And all in the hopes that when the Republicans take power they will play nice.

The Democratic leadership faced a choice — they could whip the votes for the Constitutional Option and undercut the ability of the Republican minority to abuse the rules, or they could accept the decision by a fraction of their members to give the Republicans what is in effect a veto over the Democratic agenda. I think you know what they chose.

When push came to shove, rather than address the issue of filibuster reform head on, the Democratic leadership forfeited their ability to stop the abuses.

We now face a long-term effort to fix the Senate. Without buy-in from the leadership of the Democratic caucus, we’ll continue to need rank and file Democrats like Sens. Udall, Merkley and Harkin to join us in this fight.

And as they continue fighting, they need to know we support them.

Tell Sens. Merkley, Udall and Harkin: Thank you for showing what real leadership looks like on filibuster reform. Click here to automatically add your name to the petition.

http://act.credoaction.com/r/?r=6897&id=15715-2591629-a2G1Mzx&t=10

Thank you for standing up for real filibuster reform.

Matt Lockshin, Campaign Manager

CREDO Action from Working

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SENATE: Time To Fix The Senate


“I’m not a member of any organized party,” Will Rogers once quipped. “I am a Democrat.” Yet, the Democratic Party showed remarkable unity when every single returning Democratic senator signed a letter last month to Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) “urging him to change the Senate’s filibuster rules when Congress reconvenes in January.” Among the proposed revisions that are most likely to be championed by these Democrats include a role that senators have to “remain on the floor to sustain” filibusters. Indeed, during the past few years, the filibuster has been transformed from a rarely used procedure into an unprecedented tool for obstruction and, along with other obstructive procedures like secret holds, has prevented the passage of  hundreds of bills and the confirmation of countless previously uncontroversial nominees. By pursuing reform of the filibuster and other Senate procedures, progressive reformers in the Senate are embracing what Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM) calls the “Constitutional Option” — the right of a Senate to write its own rules at the beginning of each Congress. Soon, these reformers will make their case before the U.S. Senate and the American people. At stake in this battle is the very notion of an open and accountable government that can respond to the public’s wishes and not be obstructed by an obstinate minority.

A VERY MODERN TOOL OF OBSTRUCTION: One common misperception about the filibuster is that it has always been a feature of the U.S. Senate and thus, American government. Yet the filibuster as we know it today did not exist at the country’s founding. Originally, “both the Senate and House of Representatives had a rule called the Previous Question Motion, where a simple majority [of votes] ended debate. … But the Senate dropped this provision in 1806,  leaving open the potential for a filibuster.” Even then, the first filibuster in American history didn’t take place until 1841. In the 19th century, there were “less than a dozen filibusters enacted.” In 1917, the cloture rule was adopted, requiring that two-thirds of senators to agree to stop debate. In 1975, this was  pared down to three-fifths’ approval. In the past few decades, the use of the filibuster has dramatically spiked. From 1991-1992, there were only 59 cloture filings. During the 2007-2008 legislative year, there were a record 139 (compared to just seven during a time as politically polarized as the 1969-1970 Senate session). And while many Americans may imagine that the filibuster is   used the same way that James Stewart’s character used it in the 1930s film classic Mr. Smith Goes To Washington — where the actor kept talking until he collapsed in order to keep his filibuster going — the modern day practice does not even require a senator to stay on the floor to sustain a filibuster, rather it requires 60 votes to end one.

OBSTRUCTING PROGRESS: As previously mentioned, the use of the filibuster to obstruct the will of the democratically elected majority from enacting the agenda voters want has been slowly rising over the past few decades and grew dramatically over the past couple years as Senate Republicans sought to block President Obama and the Democratic majority’s programs. According to official Senate records, there were  136 cloture motions filed from 2009 to 2010, just three motions short of the record-breaking 2007-2008 year. This unprecedented use of the filibuster by the Senate minority dramatically slowed down the government, and made hundreds of bills passed by the House stall on the Senate floor. In many cases, a minority of legislators, often buoyed by special interests, deployed the filibuster to kill legislation that was supported by huge majorities of the American people. For example, the threat of a filibuster was a major factor in the death of the public health insurance option, which had the support of 72 percent of Americans, according to a June 2009 CBS News/New York Times poll. Sen. Byron Dorgan’s (D-ND) amendment that would have allowed drug reimportation from Canada was defeated even though it  received 51 votes; 77 percent of Americans supported that policy according to Kaiser Health polling. Last month, Senate Republicans deployed the filibuster to   defeat the DREAM Act, which a November 2010 Lake Research poll found had the support of 66 percent of Americans, including 57 percent of Republicans. Additionally, obstructionists have also made use of secret holds to “anonymously block bills or confirmations of presidential nominees from reaching the floor for an unlimited time span, making naked obstructionism politically safe“; this process has left almost one in nine federal judgeships vacant. Also, current Senate rules even allow filibustering senators to force up to 30 hours of post-cloture debate once a filibuster is broken, continuing to delay progress on important legislation.

PATHS OF REFORM: Earlier this year, Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM) delivered an address about conservative obstruction at an event at the Center for American Progress Action Fund titled “Deliberation, Obstruction or Dysfunction? Evaluating the Modern U.S. Senate and its Contribution to American Governance.” At the event, Udall discussed what he called the “Constitutional Option,” which he described as the Senate having the ability to alter its rules with a simple majority vote at the beginning of each Congress. Udall has enlisted the support of a number of other senators, and they plan to push for a reform of the chamber’s rules starting on its first day, January 5. There are several different plans being proposed for changing Senate rules. Udall, along with others such as Sen.  Claire McCaskill (D-MO), wants to end secret holds. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) has proposed requiring a “specific number of Senators…to be on the floor to sustain the filibuster. This would be required even during quorum calls. At any point, a member could call for a count of the senators on the floor who stand in opposition to the regular order, and if the count falls below the required level, the regular order prevails and a   majority vote is held.” “The American people believe that you have to go defend your position, hold the floor, and if you’re not there, the Senate goes forth and holds a majority vote. And so that is the model we’re  trying to create,” the senator said during an appearance on The Big Picture With Thom Hartmann. Meanwhile, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) is calling for ending the filibuster altogether. The sentiments of the reformers are in line with 50 percent of Americans, who said in a February 2010 CBS/New York Times poll that the filibuster should be changed (44 percent were opposed).