Harry Reid is on the Senate floor this morning complaining, yet again, about Republicans’ frequent use of the filibuster to block President Obama’s executive-branch appointments and judicial nominations. “There are currently 75 executive branch nominations ready to be confirmed by the Senate,” he said, “waiting an average of 140 days.”
By many accounts, Reid is poised to make drastic changes to the filibuster today — so that judicial nominees and executive-branch appointments would only need 51 votes for confirmation. This is the so-called “nuclear option.”
So how would he actually do it? Usually it’s simpler for the Senate to change its rules at the beginning of a session, but there are other options for modifying the filibuster right now:
As the University of Miami’s Greg Koger explains here, there are a number of ways the Senate can change its rules mid-session.
The most prominent, detailed in this CRS report, is for the Senate to declare the filibuster unconstitutional. One way for this to happen would be for the presiding officer — most likely Vice President Biden or Senate president pro tempore Pat Leahy — to declare it unconstitutional, either in whole or in part (for example, for just judicial and executive nomination). That’s a break with Senate precedents, by which the body as a whole has to decide constitutional issues. A Republican Senator would likely appeal, and then a Democratic Senator would move to table the appeal, which would then go to a majority vote of the chamber. If a majority tables the appeal, the filibuster is effectively amended or ended.
Harry Reid and the Democrat use the NUCLEAR OPTION destroying centuries of tradition and rules. It will not be a good thing.