The Senate’s agreement to blunt the filibuster

What happened

Senate Democrats’ threat to use the “nuclear option” of revoking the minority’s right to filibuster presidential appointees paid off this week, leading to a last-minute deal with Republicans to unblock seven of President Obama’s stalled nominations. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had threatened to unilaterally change Senate rules so that executive branch nominees could be approved with a simple 51-vote majority, preventing Republican-led filibusters that require 60 votes to overcome. But Reid backed down after some Senate Republicans agreed to allow a vote on the long-delayed confirmation of Richard Cordray as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Senate Republicans also said they would allow up-or-down votes on six other nominees, including Gina McCarthy as head of the Environmental Protection Agency and Thomas Perez as Labor secretary. In exchange, President Obama agreed to replace two nominees to the National Labor Relations Board whom he had unilaterally named as “recess appointments” during a Senate break—a move Republicans say was illegal.

The deal to avoid the nuclear option was brokered by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who persuaded 17 Republican senators to join Democrats in allowing Cordray’s nomination to proceed. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who had warned that changing the rules on filibusters would “kill the Senate,” hailed the agreement as an “important moment.”

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What the editorials said

Democrats should have made good on their threat to change Senate rules, said The New York Times. The filibuster has become a key tool of Republican obstructionism. Between 1976 and 2008, only 20 executive nominees were filibustered; 16 of Obama’s have been. The Constitution set a 51-vote majority for approving legislation and appointees, and did not intend to give the minority party a “veto over a president’s team.” This limited deal won’t stop the GOP from blocking Obama’s choices for a new secretary of Homeland Security, or chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Democrats didn’t technically “pull the trigger,” said The Wall Street Journal. But by simply threatening to, they have “established a de facto majority-vote rule.” Now every time the GOP threatens a filibuster, Harry Reid can reach for the trigger again. Make no mistake—Democrats have “killed the filibuster against executive branch appointees.” Republicans should remember that when they regain the presidency and a Senate majority.

What the columnists said

This deal “bodes well for the future,” said Greg Sargent in WashingtonPost.com. The Republicans’ ideological “hostility to basic governing” has become so entrenched that it justified “an extraordinary response”—and Reid gave them one. Even Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham admitted that Cordray was being wrongly filibustered “because we don’t like the law” that created his agency. In short, Republicans are realizing they’ve finally pushed their policy of total obstructionism too far, said Jonathan Chait in NYMag.com. The result is a “total victory for the Democrats.”

Not exactly, said Jill Lawrence in NationalJournal.com. Senate Republicans have let Obama have his executive nominations, but they “haven’t given an inch where it really counts”—on Obama’s many unconfirmed nominees for the federal courts. Unlike Cordray, those appointees could “influence history after he’s gone.” But Obama has hardly been treated unfairly by the GOP, said Hans A. von Spakovsky in NationalReview.com. The last Congress confirmed 86 percent of his civilian nominees, including judicial and executive appointments, while the Democratic-led Congress approved only 67 percent of George W. Bush’s nominees in 2007–08. The Democrats’ hypocrisy is “truly monumental.”

Why should the public “give a darn” about this procedural dust-up? asked Steve Benen in MSNBC.com. Because this week’s deal will have a “real-world impact on the lives of real people.” Cordray’s nomination ends two years of questions over his financial watchdog’s future, and ensures that ordinary Americans will be protected from the “predatory excesses” of banks, mortgage companies, credit card companies, debt collectors, and other financial firms. The deal also represents “incremental progress” on ending our government’s political gridlock. The Senate’s deformation into an institution paralyzed by the filibuster is a defining symbol of Washington’s dysfunction. Anything that “moves the ball forward” on that, even a little, is worth celebrating.