Which would you prefer: Republicans back down and the contested exec branch nominations are confirmed, or Republicans refuse and Democrats go nuclear on exec branch nominations?
(I suspect I know the answer to that, but...well, I'll add a second one: what do you expect to be the outcome of Showdown July in the Senate?)
Nuclear option. Because in the past decade (and to a much lesser extent, even before then) the Senate hasn't done its job, whether under Republican or Democratic leadership due to filibusters of appointments which the Senate is supposed to give "advice and consent" to.
ReplyDeleteWill this cause future Democratic minorities to grind their teeth in frustration at appointments? Yes. And that's fine with me. The Senate has become too big of a political stumbling block in recent years, and it's time to slowly rectify that.
Sen McConnell has already stated plans to go nuclear as soon as he is in the majority. So, there isn't any advantage to allowing a 60-vote threshold on any nominations.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't be the least surprised, but source?
DeleteI think what he said is that *if* the Democrats unilaterally change the filibuster rules (even if the change is limited to appointments or even non-judicial appointments) then the GOP will go nuclear and abolish the filibuster, period, as soon as it has control.
DeleteFor him to say "we will go nuclear anyway, regardless of what the Democrats do" would remove any incentive for the Democrats to *not* go nuclear now. He may *intend* to do so, but I doubt he would say so now.
My ideal would be for Ds to go nuclear on exec branch nominations, then in 2014 the Rs win 51 seats and kill the filibuster forever.
DeleteIn 2016 the ratio of R to D standing for election is 2:1, so Ds take back the Senate, win the presidency, and bludgeon a reduced R majority in the House into accepting real reform.
I'd rather the Republicans back down, and the Demoncrats exercise the nuclear option anyway--pre-emptively preventing this from happening again. (I'd also prefer to see the way judicial nominations are treated modified, although I agree that perhaps thy should be subjected to greater scrutiny because of the lifetime appointments...actually, I'd prefer to see the "lifetime" appointments to be for a maximum of something like 20 years...)
ReplyDeleteThe President has the right to appoint his nominees and have the Senate confirm them by majority vote of the Senate. If the GOP allows the votes to occur, fine. Then we can all move on. If not, blow the Senate up. Majority rule in the Senate worked fine for the country until the 1990s. It won't hurt to go back to it. I don't trust Democrat Senators to actually filibuster objectionable GOP nominees in the future anyway.
ReplyDeleteNuclear option for executive noms. I don't want to see the Senate become a second House, but the President should be able to have the people he wants for his Administration put into place.
ReplyDeleteCould be wrong, but I expect the Republicans to back down and Reid to hold off.
I've read that there's 11 nominations in the docket. I don't think it's possible that the Republicans will back down on all of them.
DeleteI wonder whether any Democratic senators beat themselves up today for not supporting McConnell's push for the quote-unquote nuclear option (such drama queens, these senators, huh?) back in the day. Considering how much of Democrats' politicking over the last couple years has consisted of drawing attention to Republicans' gross overreach, might it have been worth just letting a Republican Senate pass whatever nonsense they like unobstructed, all the better to hammer them with come election time?
ReplyDelete"might it have been worth just letting a Republican Senate pass whatever nonsense they like unobstructed, all the better to hammer them with come election time?"
ReplyDeleteNo, I disagree. Nonsense hurts the country. Senators playing Denunciopoly with each other has no effect. Far too much of the business of Congress (not far south of 100%) is already taken up with playing electoral politics rather than making policy.
I prefer that the Rs back down on ALL of the nominees. But I don't think they will. In which case, I hope that the Dems exercise the nuclear option. But I'm skeptical that they will.
ReplyDeleteI think the most likely outcome this month is that the Rs let most of the nominees through and the Dems cave on the nuclear option. Then, the Rs keep obstructing future nominees, and we have the same discussion all over again in a few months.
I'm concerned about the unknown unknowns of going Nuclear for executive branch appointees. It doesn't seem likely that the next Republican majority (which could come as soon as 2014, bordering on probability) will keep the 60-vote threshold for normal legislation around. The Republicans can do a lot of damage if they were to regain all three branches simultaneously soon. Maybe damage that can't be repaired. The Republicans have proven that you really can't put genuine threats to representative democracy past them when they have power.
ReplyDeleteConventional explosives.
ReplyDeleteThat is, something less than nuclear, but reform none the less. 50%+1 completely dominates the House, particularly also in the procedure--how votes are brought to the floor is very tightly controlled by the speaker, the majority-of-the-majority thing. In the Senate, things seem slightly less rigid, particularly in the offering of amendments to bills, but there's far too much potential for holds, delays, and 60 votes seems too much.
I'd rather the threshold be set at, say, 6/11 or 5/9 or such, rather than today's 3/5. Add into this a more fluid set of procedural rules. Maybe make the vote levels also flexible. They start at 3/5 for a number of months, then drop to 4/7, then to 5/9, then to 6/11, and so on.
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I'll add that I'm also incredibly worried about Republicans on this. With how they've governed at the state level over the past three years, I have zero trust that they'll respect the current system in the least, and with a brief window could do all sorts of legislative damage to the country. They've been completely shameless about it.
For executive nominations, require only a simple majority for cloture.
ReplyDeleteFor judicial nominations, institute something like the Harkin Plan, where the threshold for cloture drops after a certain number of votes and days.
For legislation, Superbill!
While I understand the logical reasoning behind Superbill, I prefer the simplicity (in explanation) of something like the Harkin Plan or a lower cloture threshold.
DeleteAlso, I think this is the way things ought to be regardless of which party is in power. If you're scared of what Republicans might do, go support Democratic GOTV efforts with your time or money. (Why, a Democratic Senate with only a vote or two margin may be the best opportunity to update the filibuster.)
Prefer nuclear.
ReplyDeleteWill end up getting a few (my guess is not even all 7) confirmation votes. McConnell goes nuclear on day 1 of the 2015 Senate, regardless. Harry Reid is revealed to be the spineless, feckless douche everyone knows him to be.
If McConnell gets a majority, it will probably be 51-49. In that event, it will only take one Republican (Murkowski? Collins?) to spoil his plan for going nuclear--assuming he wants to, which I am not sure of. It really might occur to some of the Republicans after all that in 2016 there will be a lot more Republicans up for re-election (some in purple or blue-ish states) than Democrats, and so the Democrats might regain control then.
ReplyDelete