Ka-boom!
Senate Democrats invoked the feared “nuclear option” to blast away the ability to filibuster President Obama’s nominees — infuriating Republicans and leading to uncertain fallout in an already-tense Congress.
With three of Obama’s top Appeals Court nominees stalled by Republican filibusters, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Thursday engineered a procedural ruling that would let most judges and administration appointees get confirmed on a simple majority vote.
Fifty-one is the new number needed to get nominees through the slow-moving Senate, rather than 60 – in a chamber where the Democrats currently have 55 votes.
“The American people believe the Senate is broken and I believe they are right,” Reid said right before setting the move in motion.
In the end, Democrats pushed through the change – in the form of a new Senate precedent – on a party-line 52-48 vote.
Obama — a former senator whose approval ratings have sagged amid the botched Obamacare rollout — seized on the issue. “A majority of senators believe as I believe: Enough is enough,” he said in the White House briefing room. Obama called the filibuster “a reckless and relentless tool to grind all business to a halt.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called the move a “raw power play” – and said the whole issue was meant to “distract people from ObamaCare.”
“You’ll regret this, and you may regret this a lot sooner than you think,” McConnell, who is up for reelection, warned. But he steered clear of specific threats. “I don’t think this is a time to be talking about reprisals,” he told reporters.
The move threatens to reverberate through the chamber for years to come. The last change so significant in how the Senate operates occurred in 1975, when the number of senators needed to cut off debate got reduced from 67 to 60.
Reid on Thursday didn’t formally change the rules of the Senate – which would have required support of two-thirds all senators present and voting.
Instead, he called up the stalled nomination of Patricia Millet to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals – a powerful court that is a feeder to the U.S. Supreme Court. After Democrats pushed through the nuclear option, they were able to cut off debate on her nomination by a vote of 55-43.
Filibusters would still be allowed to slow legislation on Supreme Court nominations under the new precedent – though Republicans warn this, too, could change.
Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) coined the term “nuclear” option during the George W. Bush administration — when Republicans were outraged by Democratic obstruction of Bush’s conservative court nominees.
At the time, Reid and most other Democrats were vehemently against it. It was called nuclear because the last-resort move could be done without any cooperation from the minority – and might well provoke its wrath.
“The Senate is forever changed. This is not a good thing,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, who this month threatened to hold up all Obama nominees over the Benghazi issue.
“They broke the rules to get their way,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). “That’s going to create an awful lot of problems in the future.”
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said he didn’t fear any reprisals from Republicans. “They can’t do it while we’re in power,” he said, predicting Republicans wouldn’t retake the chamber in 2014.
“We’d much prefer the risk of up or down votes and majority rule than the risk of continued total obstruction. That’s the bottom line no matter who’s in power,” said Sen. Schumer, who threw his support to the change – after warning in 2005 that the nuke option “goes against the checks and balances.”