Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
made his most explicit threat yet about using the so-called nuclear option to do away with Republican filibusters of President Obama's nominees in a radio interview Friday.
“All within the sound of my voice, including my Democratic senators and the Republican senators who I serve with, should understand that we as a body have the power on any given day to change the rules with a simple majority, and I will do that if necessary,” Reid says. [...]
“I’m a very patient man. Last Congress and this Congress, we had the opportunity to make some big changes. We made changes, but the time will tell whether they’re big enough. I’m going to wait and build a case,” Reid says. “If the Republicans in the Senate don’t start approving some judges and don’t start helping get some of these nominations done, then we’re going to have to take more action.”
Yeah, we've heard this before, frequently. It was an ongoing theme with Reid in the lead up to rules reform at the beginning of the session in January. And for all Reid's tough talk, we ended up with an extremely
watered down reform that Republicans promptly ignored, actually escalating their obstruction by filibustering Chuck Hagel (the first time ever a defense secretary nominee had been filibustered), John Brennan at CIA, Caitlin Halligan for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeal, and Richard Cordray at the CFPB. That's not to mention actually pre-empting a nomination Susan Rice for State by just threatening the filibuster.
Is all that enough to finally push Reid over the edge? He's at least warning Republicans that it very well could be. Of course, at the same time, more than a dozen of them are threatening to derail gun legislation, so they're not taking him too seriously. Reid's also talking just about nominations in this particular, threat, not mentioning legislative filibusters. Which could mean this is still just in the realm of threats: The last time the nuclear option was threatened it was under Bill Frist and it was over Democratic opposition to Bush's (awful) judicial nominees. Reid could specifically be keeping his threats limited to nominees in the hopes of bringing together another "gang" and agreement on moving nominations.
That's fine, as far as it goes. But it means that no critical legislative priority—including gun safety—is going to move forward in the next two years. It also gives that much more opportunity for Republican hostage-taking, unless actually pulling the trigger on the nuclear option for nominations would lead Republicans to think Reid would be willing to take that step completely. And that is pretty good argument for moving ahead with it now.
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