Annie
Not So Junior Member
and won't any attempt to reverse any Obama legislation have to pass with veto proof majorities? 51 ain't gonna get it.
Sure it will, Levin saw it, even has it on his website:
http://www.levin.senate.gov/newsroo...-levin-senate-floor-remarks-on-nuclear-option
...Arguments about the nuclear option are not new. Senator Arthur Vandenberg, confronting the same question in 1949, Senator Vandenberg, who was a giant of the Senate, one of my predecessors from Michigan, said that if the majority can change the rules at will -- quote -- "there are no rules except the transient unregulated wishes of a majority of whatever quorum is temporarily in control of the Senate."
Now, Senator Vandenberg, when he took that position, was arguing against changing the rules by fiat, although he favored the rule change that was being considered. Overruling the ruling of the chair, as we have now down, by a simple majority is not a one-time action. If a Senate majority demonstrates it can make such a change once, there are no rules which binds a majority and all future majorities will feel free to exercise the same power, not just on judges and executive appointments but on legislation.
We've avoided taking these steps in the past, these nuclear steps, but we've avoided them sometimes barely. I'm glad that we avoided the possible use of the nuclear option again earlier this year when our leaders agreed on a path allowing the Senate to proceed to a vote on the president's nominees for several unfilled vacancies in his administration. But today we are once again moving down a destructive path.
The issue, Mr. President, is not whether to change the rules. I support changing the rules to allow a president to get a vote on nominees to executive and to most judicial positions. What this is all about is ends and means. Pursuing the nuclear option in this manner removes an important check on majority overreach. As Senator Vandenberg said, if a Senate majority decides to pursue its aims unrestrained by the rules, we will have sacrificed a professed, vital principle for the sake of momentary convenience.
Republicans have filibustered three eminently qualified nominees to the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. They make no pretense of the argument that these nominees are unqualified. The mere nomination of qualified judges by this President, they say, qualifies as court-packing. It is the latest attempt by Republicans, having lost two presidential elections, to seek preventing the duly elected President from fulfilling his constitutional duties.
The thin veneer of substance laid over this partisan obstruction is the claim that the D.C. Circuit has too many judges. To be kind, this is a debatable proposition, one for which there is ample contrary evidence and surely one that falls far short of the need to provoke a constitutional battle. Republicans know they cannot succeed in passing legislation to reduce the size of the court, so presented with a statutory and constitutional reality they do not like, they have decided to ignore that reality and decided that they can obstruct the president's nominees for no substantive reason.
So let nobody mistake my meaning. The actions of the Senate Republicans in these matters have been irresponsible. These actions put short-term partisan interest ahead of the good of the nation and the future of this Senate as a unique institution, and it is deeply dispiriting to see so many Republican colleagues who have in the past pledged to filibuster judicial nominees only in extraordinary circumstance engaged in such partisan gamesmanship. Whatever their motivations, the repercussions of their actions are clear. They are contributing to the destruction of an important check against majority overreach and to the frustration of those willing to break the rules to change the rules. Those of us who are unwilling to do that have now seen it occur before our eyes. The chair was overruled earlier today.
So why do I not join my Democratic colleagues in supporting the method by which they propose to change the rules? My opposition to the use of the nuclear option to change the rules of the Senate is not a defense of the current abuse of the rules. My opposition to the nuclear option is not new. Republicans threatened in 2005 to use the nuclear option in a dispute over judicial nominees. I strongly opposed their plans, just as Senator Kennedy did, Senator Biden did, Senator Byrd did, and just about every Senate democrat did, including democrats still in the Senate today.
Back then, Senator Kennedy called the Republican plan -- quote -- "a preemptive nuclear strike." he said, “Neither the Constitution nore Senate rules nor Senate precedents nor American history provide any justification for selectively nullifying the use of the filibuster. Equally important, he said, “Neither the Constitution nor the rules nor the precedents nor history provide any permissible means for a bare majority of the Senate to take that radical step without breaking or ignoring three kids of applicable rules and unquestioned precedents.”
And here's what then-Senator Biden said during that 2005 fight, quote, "The nuclear option abandons America's sense of fair play. It's the one thing this country stands for: not tilting the playing field on the side of those who control and own the field." And he said, "I say to my friends on the Republican side, you may own the field right now but you won't own it forever." And he concluded, "I pray to God when the Democrats take back control we don't make the same kind of naked power grab that you are doing."
My position today is consistent with the position that I took then, that every Senate democrat took then, and that's just back in 2005. That was to preserve the rights of the Senate minority. I can't ignore that...
