Senate to Consider Crazy, Unprecedented “50%+1” Vote Rule for Appointments?
By An important moment on the Senate floor just now: Harry Reid said he would be filing cloture today on a whole bunch of executive nominations, and challenged Republicans to act on them — a major escalation of the threat to change the Senate rules by simple majority, i.e, the “nuclear option.”
“We’re going to file cloture on a bunch of nominations, and those votes will occur next week when we schedule them,” Reid said, adding later that if no movement occurred on them, “we know what’s going to happen.”
According to a senior Senate Democratic aide, this means that Reid will file cloture on the following nominations today: Richard Cordray as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; Gina McCarthy as head of the Environmental Protection Agency; Obama’s picks to the National Labor Relations Board; and possibly Thomas Perez as Labor Secretary.
It’s hard to imagine Reid saying this if he didn’t have the votes; if so, they only question is whether McConnell will back down to preserve the filibuster. But a large part of me still has trouble believing that it isn’t a bluff.