You mean changing it so that they need 60 votes in the Senate for confirming nominations and other stuff instead of a simple majority? Pfft, fat chance of that happening.
They've also threatened to use the 'nuclear option' for the SCOTUS nominee. Honestly, the 60 vote threshold really shouldn't be removeable because, as much as the Republicans abused it, it's an important check and balance between the two parties.
Filibustering is the practice wherein someone just keeps talking to delay the vote on a topic. Not sure what you are referring to.
Been a bit since I've had the chance to do a miniature guest lecture.
So, the "filibuster" and the "nuclear option."
In the Senate, almost every action is a) passed on a simple majority vote, but b) technically subject to unlimited debate. There is only one way to force an end to debate: filing cloture. This, however, requires the support of 3/5 of those duly sworn into the Senate (i.e. 60 votes). This is also not an original part of the Senate, but merely a compromise to the rules struck many decades ago as a sort of compromise to end a greater procedural war.
Here's an example of the modern filibuster in action. Let's say the Senate started consideration of a bill making interstate commerce in "Make America Great Again" hats a criminal felony offense. Sen. Slee really dislikes the bill, but only has 40 other senators on his side. If this came up for a final passage vote, he'd lose (unless he kidnaps or otherwise prevents 20 of the senators supporting the bill from voting, but that's another story). Instead, he and the other 40 senators will vote against cloture, preventing debate time from ending and thus preventing a vote on final passage. He doesn't have to actually debate or speechify at all.
He could speechify if he wants, and doing so could (assuming he never needs to step off the floor for any reason for the rest of eternity) prevent a cloture vote altogether. Once cloture has been filed, however, there are strict limits on how long a given senator gets to debate on an issue, and the chance for an actual filibuster is over.
The "nuclear option," meanwhile, allows a the Senate to effectively reinterpret the rules of the Senate as they see fit on a majority vote. When Sen. Reid nuked the filibuster of most nominees, the mechanics worked out more or less as following: the Senate holds a cloture vote; the cloture vote fails; Reid insists to the presiding officer that cloture is actually only a majority vote and not 60; the presiding officer reads the plain text of the Standing Rules of the Senate and rules against him; Reid challenges his ruling - which, if he uses the loophole right, is itself not subject to debate, does not require a cloture vote, and thus passes on a majority vote. Once the ruling is successfully challenged, new precedent is set. They still go through the steps and timing requirements of cloture, but all the cloture votes themselves only require a majority.
In other words, this loophole allows the majority of the Senate to insist that when the rules say '60' they actually
mean 'majority'. Or anything else rules-related, for that matter. The only reason things function like this is because precedent is supposed to not be bonkers, so every time someone uses the nuclear option the Senate's culture and history comes a little closer to tearing apart at the seams.
(The House, meanwhile, regularly stretches, waives, and messes with its own rules on a majority vote or even just on a majority vote of a single committee. The House is a procedural hellscape, in my honest opinion, and I'd rather the Senate not go down that road. Yes, I think Sen. Reid made a horrible mistake actually using a procedural nuke. And yes, I think the filibuster is better than the alternative.)
McConnell will likely nuke the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, and he might even nuke the filibuster for things like amendments to standalone legislation or the motion to proceed, but I think/hope he won't nuke the filibuster for standalone legislation. He has reasons to not want to, and I think he's a strategic fellow.
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Topic: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American: T+0 (Read 1422255 times)