No, that is explicitly not what the “nuclear option” is.
The nuclear option is a contrived parliamentary procedure by which the majority of the senate agrees to interpret the cloture rule, which actually reads “three-fifths of all senators duly chosen and sworn” (two-thirds for rule changes), as meaning “a simple majority”. In other words, it is to lie about the rules.
~Max
Yep. Look, before the GOP carved out a niche out of the filibuster, there was some defense for it.
But Moscow Mitch has made it clear he will get rid of the filibuster anytime it gets in his way.
The Dems have to realize that and start playing hardball.
They can still do that even if the current “filibuster” is “nuked”.
Yeah, and so? If Mitch wanted any of those things he would happily carve out an exception or nuke the filibuster himself. It is not like if the Dems don’t nuke the GOP can’t. They have shown they will whenever they want to.
It’s funny how this keeps coming up. I think a lot of folks who are calling to nuke the filibuster are forgetting the fact that this was what allowed the Dems to block a lot of crap Trump was trying to do. This will be yet another thing that bites the party pushing it through because they currently can sometime down the road.
Personally, I think it’s a bad idea, but if the Dems do this it will be interesting to see how they (and folks advocating for it in this thread) react later on when they could use it but it’s gone. Someday, the Republicans will be in the majority again and trying to ram through something that the Dems don’t want, and one of the tools allowing them to do that will be gone or further eroded such that they won’t be able to do anything about it.
So let me pose the question in the OP again to you.
Based on this:
-I’m guessing everyone here thinks that federal judges are necessary for our government to function. What should have been done in 2013 to allow for federal judges to be appointed if the nuclear option wasn’t used?
-Nowadays, what is the alternative in the current situation? Do you think that restoring the VRA and/or other election-related proposals are not an essential government function, or do you have an alternative strategy to make them happen?
No, it didn’t. See Mitch is very crafty- he allowed some stupid bill to get close to passing knowing full well they’d be blocked. If Mitch had really wanted any of that crap, he would have carved out some sort of exemption from the Filibuster, juts like he did for SCOTUS choices.
This is fine as a platitude, but I don’t think anyone’s suggesting not following the rules.
Congressional rules changes have never required a Constitutional amendment. There is no definition of “direct” that governs the process. “Messages between the houses” is an existing Congressional rule. If Democrats decide to use and follow that rule, they are well within parliamentary procedure (which is the only operating principle in Congress).
McConnell shoots down Trump’s call to end the filibuster | TheHill
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is shooting down President Trump’s push for Republicans to change the Senate’s rules for blocking legislation.
Asked if Republicans would nix the 60-vote filibuster to allow legislation to pass by a simple majority, McConnell told reporters, “That will not happen.”
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) echoed his GOP counterpart, noting that a majority of senators have backed keeping the higher 60-vote threshold.
“I think the idea of using the nuclear option for legislative stuff is pretty much dead,” Schumer said.
I think the likelihood of the Republicans ending the filibuster is higher than it was back then, though. At this point it’s clear that the overwhelming percentage of Democrats favor ending ending it in order to implement their priorities, which increases the chance that a comparable percentage of Republicans might be in favor of a pre-emptive strike when they have priorities of their own.
I stand corrected, thank you. It’s quibbling, but perhaps important quibbling.
Like what? I’m honestly trying to remember what bills the GOP was trying to pass during Trump’s term that the Democrats successfully filibustered.
Here is a quick cite I found:
I don’t see anything in there that truly matters (on the order of something like Voting Rights), other than the abortion stuff, which I already agreed would be the one area where the GOP would make headway on their agenda without a filibuster.
Honestly to me the stuff in that list is probably stuff that should have passed. The voters voted for Trump and the GOP, who pretty explicitly ran on all of that crap. It sucks, but it’s reality.
And if the GOP gains back the Senate and wants to pass a bill to remove mandatory mail-in voting, fine. That’s what the voters apparently want. But they will need the Presidency too, and they will need to do it in an environment where disenfranchisement as a tactic is harder to employ.
Are you saying the Democrats didn’t use the filibuster during the Trump presidency? Or that the Republicans simply allowed the Dems to block stuff they didn’t really care about so the Dems would THINK that the filibuster does something?
By changing the status quo that had been in effect for the previous 40 years there were unintended consequences. I don’t know what they ‘should’ have done differently, but that’s the reality. And of course, once that happened the other side then did the same thing when they could. But note in both cases they didn’t nuke the whole thing. Changing the rules of the filibuster isn’t exactly unheard of in our history, as over time the rules have changed…and in fact, changing them is part of the process, which is deliberately left vague in the Constitution.
Well, off the top of my head they could simply change the rules slightly so that a motion to proceed is a simple majority vote, which would at least get past the current procedural foot-dragging that is stopping this before it’s even discussed. Yes, this would be another small change that would have consequences down the road when the Dems wanted or needed to halt or slow down opening a debate on a bill they didn’t like, but it’s less radical than the full nuke option, which is what I was talking about and what many in this thread are arguing for.
The nuclear option itself, the procedure, is “not following the rules” in the first degree.
The justification used is, our bill is so essential to government we are forced to “not follow the rules”.
Red flags all over for me.
~Max
AFAIK there is no procedural reason the majority leader has to recognize a hold. Holds have always been informal requests.
~Max
Your mistake is believing what Mitch says instead of watching what he does.
When it’s shit he doesn’t care about and doesn’t actually want to do like funding the wall, the filibuster is sacrosanct.
When Trump’s agenda aligned with Mitch’s, like with Supreme Court justices, the filibuster can go fuck itself.
And they don’t require one now; however, surely you agree that a Constitutional amendment pre-empts Senate rules. So if for whatever reason you don’t want to or can’t change the Senate rules, another way of getting from A to B is to pass a Constitutional amendment via a convention of the States.
~Max
nm…hmmm
That’s one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it:
When it’s a major unilateral step back from the filibuster, such as for legislative matters, the filibuster is sancrosact.
When it’s something barely distinguishable from a step already taken by Harry Reid on judges, then not so.
Reid had to do what he had to do. The Republicans had basically taken a position that black presidents don’t get to nominate ANY federal judges. So Reid got the rule changed, except for Supreme Court justices. McConnell took the extra step of eliminating it so that the justice stolen from Obama could get sworn in.
McConnell didn’t try to eliminate the legislative filibuster during Trump’s term because it would have been idiotic for him to do so. The only major Republican priority that got blocked in the Senate during the first half of Trump’s term was the repeal of the ACA, which failed because three Republican defectors meant that they couldn’t even get a majority of the Senate. Then they turned to the Trump tax cut, which they passed just fine through reconciliation. Those two items – and confirming judges – were effectively the entire Republican agenda for the first half of Trump’s term. And after 2018 there was no point in eliminating the filibuster, because the Democratic House would just kill anything controversial they passed anyway.
I am not going to keep arguing this, but I would just note that the above link, in which McConnell flat out ruled out eliminating the legislative filibuster, dates from May of 2017, at the beginning of Trump’s term and well before the events that you describe. At that point, no one knew what would or wouldn’t come up during the term which a filibuster elimination might be useful for, nor did anyone know what the outcome of the 2018 congressional elections would be.
At least using the “nuclear option”, you can’t just eliminate the filibuster in the abstract. This method requires a Point of Order to be raised on a cloture motion on a specific bill or nomination. That’s how McConnell eliminated the filibuster on Supreme Court justices – he waited until Gorsuch was actually filibustered and executed the nuclear option then.
As things developed, there was no significant legislation that came along during Trump’s term where eliminating the filibuster would have led to its passage. And he could have and certainly would have reversed himself if such had been the case.
No one is arguing this. That is definitely something Mitch said. We all agree.
He says a lot of things e.g. no confirming Supreme Court justices in election years.