What’s all this talk about a “nuclear option,” you ask?
Is it the Russians? The Iranians? Is the Cold War back with a vengeance?
No, it’s probably just the media trying its hardest to make a story about parliamentary procedure sound interesting.
This change will require only a majority of votes for executive and non-Supreme-Court judicial nominations (in contrast to the 60% required now).
Majority doesn’t seem so bad, right? Some are not so sure… the rule change is likely to cause major changes in the way the Senate does business, during this Congress and those elected in the future.
For one, many long-standing vacancies on federal courts and agencies will now be filled. Hopefully, this will allow the government and the court system to run more efficiently.
But many political analysts believe the rule change will have broader more precarious consequences.
According to Ezra Klein of the Washington Post, the filibuster for legislation might be on the way out as well:
The filibuster now exists in what you might call an unstable equilibrium. It theoretically forces a 60-vote threshold on important legislation. But it can — and now, in part, has —been undone with 51 votes. Its only protection was the perceived norm against using the 51-vote option. Democrats just blew that norm apart. The moment one party or the other filibusters a consequential and popular bill, that’s likely the end of the filibuster, permanently.
Is this really “the end of the filibuster?”
Should pure majority rule come to the Senate, as it exists in the House?
Will Congress be more or less dysfunctional post-nuke?
Let us know what you think in the comments section below.
