The United States Senate will begin consideration of a rules change that is long over-due. Harry Reid, the majority leader, is poised to enact the “nuclear option” on filibusters pertaining to non-judicial nominees of any president.
If successful, a vote of 51 Senators will be needed to approve presidential cabinet nominees. No more 60 vote thresholds.
I can only say, hallelujah! As Majority Leader Reid stated on Meet the Press, there have been over 400 cloture votes (a procedure to end filibusters in the Senate) since he has been majority leader. Talk about over-kill!
The nuclear option puts Mitch McConnell, minority leader of the Senate, squarely on the hot seat. He is faced with a near impossible predicament to solve. Should he back down and let the rule change go through, thereby risking a primary challenge next year for himself and other Republicans? Or, will he fight tooth and nail against the rule change and risk the possibility that Senate Republicans are forever branded as the party of NO?
What we will see on Monday is the “Cuban Missile Crisis” of the United States Senate. The line in the sand is drawn. Who will blink first and back down?
I am in favor of the rules change despite being a traditionalist. Data on the use of the filibuster across the decades show what the founders never expected — that the Senate would move from the world’s most deliberative body to the gridlocked one of today. The filibuster was designed to be a poison pill. Just hinting at going down that road, which is still done anonymously when a Senator puts a hold on legislation, used to be the nuclear option. Political differences were resolved through negotiation. Only a handful of threats made it to an actual filibuster. I witnessed one in the early 1980′s when the Voting Rights Act came up for renewal. Back then, Senators Kennedy (D-MA) and Packwood (R-OR) worked together to successfully end debate on the Senate floor.
That all changed in the mid-to-late 2000′s. Before the election of President Obama in 2008, a spike in cloture votes occurred. First, Democrats and then Republicans began to rely on the filibuster instead of negotiation to resolve differences. And now look where we are. The Senate, with few exceptions, is the place where legislation and nominees go to die.
What Senator Reid proposes is truly the best option to put an end to the Senate’s childish behavior. It may even be necessary to change the rules again to include judicial nominees and spending bills. It is unlikely, that regardless of what party controls the Senate, that a true filibuster majority will exist. America is too divided for that to happen.
I feel that deep down, Mitch McConnell knows Harry Reid will go down in history as the majority leader who saved the Senate. Both Senators, equally seasoned, became leaders through the Appropriations committee–the place where real power gets exercised. But there is one big difference between the two. Senator McConnell has a caucus with Senators who have extreme political views, unseasoned, and no respect for the history of the Senate. And that in a nutshell is what is wrong with politics in America in 2013. It is an amateur hour in both Houses of Congress. Our founders, some of the most intelligent, elitist, and accomplished leaders in society, would be shocked to find the Senate controlled by political and religious ideologues, the very people from which they escaped.