The Nuclear Option

Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats have finally been pushed over the edge, and have changed the rules for the use of the filibuster on Presidential appointments. Within hours I saw references to this step as "bullying" and the "use of blunt force." Of course the very description of this as the "nuclear option" lends itself to this sort of hyperbole.


To put it in some perspective, consider this graphic representation of the (relatively) recent history of the use of the filibuster on Presedential nominations:

 

Senate Republicans are on record as saying that none of Obama´s nominees going forward are going to be approved. which means they won´t even be voted on. Obama has three nominations to the DC appeals court that have been in filibuster land for months now. Republicans apparently don´t see the irony of justifying their obstructionism with the argument that the appeals court doesn´t have enough work to do to warrent its traditional number of justices. Senators saying judges aren´t working hard enough.

The Republicans are using the filibuster to hold up nominees so as to prevent agencies which they do not like, for example the NLRB, from even functioning. They tried for months to prevent anyone from being named to head the new Consumer Protection Agency (or whatever it is technically called) because they didn´t like the fact that the agency was created in the first place.

Of course the cable news shows are going to go crazy with this latest step. I suppose they already have. When commentators inevitably try to depict this as a rash act by the Democrats which they will some day regret, remember how long Harry Reid has been resisting pressure to do this. Reid is not an idiot. He understands the Senate´s history and it´s traditions. He knows that the majority today can be the minority tomorrow, and he has been holding off the filibuster "reformers" in his own party for a long, long time.

Senators Merkel and Udall, and probably others, have been sending me emails for two or three years now asking me to sign petitions demanding the nuclear option, but Reid and the majority of Senate Democrats always resisted. As recently as this past January, Reid supposedly worked out some kind of agreement with McConnell that was going to leave the filibuster rules in place while, supposedly, smoothing the way for legislation to work its way through the system. I don´t know how exactly that was supposed to work.

The real bullying that has been going on has been from the Senate Republicans who have shown no higher aspiration than to deny Obama anything and everything, to hell with the consequences to the country. It is a sad day, but I don´t think the Democrats had any choices left. Ultimately it is better to have nominees approved by a vote of 51 senators than to have them denied by a vote of 40.

Continuing with some perspective, consider what this nuclear option does not do. It does not affect the use of the filibuster on supreme court nominees nor does it affect the use, and abuse, of the filibuster on legislation. It only takes the reasonable position that, barring some extraordinary circumstances, a president should have the right to name his own team and have that team approved, and that the executive has the right to a similar consideration of his judicial nominees.

As regards the expectation that the Democrats will some day regret this step: if this Republican party, as it is currently constituted, takes control of the Senate, we will have a lot more things to regret than just how they use the filibuster rules.

If, on the other hand, the Republican party returns to the sanity of the early years depicted in the graph above, there will be nothing to worry about for any of us.