President Barack Obama has done something, no other president has been able to accomplish. With the help of Senate majority leader Harry Reid, the senate voted this week to enact the so-called nuclear option.
By a 52-48 vote, the Senate overturned a rule that was in place for over a century, changing the previous requirement for 60 votes to overcome a filibuster in nominations, to 51 percent.
The senate vote silences the bothersome minority that are holding up the president’s ability to have his appointees quickly seated in positions like federal judges.
There are about 240 nominees, about 50 of which are for the judiciary, awaiting confirmation in the Senate.
The White House is most keen to secure confirmation of Jeh Johnson as secretary of homeland security, Mel Watt as head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and Janet Yellen as chair of the Federal Reserve, a White House official told The Washington Post.
The senate and the president are being short sighted. In their effort to get their way they have removed an important check to the encroaching power of the executive branch, ensuring the senates own irrelevancy.
President Obama lobbied at least three indecisive Senate Democrats to back this week’s move to ban filibusters of presidential nominees, says a report, as the White House and its allies seem to be preparing to push for confirmation of hundreds of judicial and executive nominees.
Obama played an active role in Thursday’s amendment to the Senate’s filibuster rules, which deprives the minority party of it power to block presidential nominations, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Obama spoke to three indecisive senators on phone, telling them “how important this was to him and our ability to get anything done for the rest of the term,” a Senate Democratic aide was quoted as saying.
There is little outcry from Republican leaders either. Americans very likely do not understand the implications of this move by the senate, or else they would make their voices heard by lighting up the capitol phone lines.
At least one senator seemed to understand what is happening.
“This is about a naked power grab, and nothing more,” Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley from Iowa, the ranking member of the judiciary committee, said. “This is about the other side not getting everything they want, when they want it.”
Grassley said any vote to change the Senate rules is “a vote to remove one of the last meaningful checks on the president, and that vote would put these views on this important court.” Democrats know, he added, “if they can stack the deck on the D.C. Circuit, they can remove one of the last remaining checks on presidential power.”
He added: “The silver lining is that there will come a day when the roles are reversed.”
