Schumer: I Wish Democrats Hadn’t Triggered the ‘Nuclear Option’

Tsing Tao

Tsing Tao

Oops. Whocouldanode? I remember folks here talking about how this was going to come back and bite the Democrats, but they were too stupid to see it at the time. Poetic Justice if ever there was.

Schumer: I Wish Democrats Hadn’t Triggered the ‘Nuclear Option’

Incoming Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) says he regrets a 2013 decision by Senate Democrats, known as the “nuclear option” to decrease the number of senators needed to confirm Cabinet picks from 60 to 51 votes.
“I wish it hadn’t happened,” Schumer said in an interview with CNN, about the move that was triggered by former Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid (D-NV).

The move is dubbed the “nuclear option” because by altering the filibuster rules it stands to blow up bipartisan Senate relations.

“I argued against it at the time,” Schumer said. “I said both for Supreme Court and in Cabinet should be 60, because on such important positions there should be some degree of bipartisanship. I won on Supreme Court, lost on Cabinet. But, that’s what we have to live with now.”

Republicans hold a 52-48 majority in the new Senate which means they already have the number needed to confirm Trump’s nominees without the Democrats. However, the Democrats have still vowed to fight against the picks. Schumer and his fellow Democratic senators will aggressively target eight of President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks, which he refers to as “rigged.”

“If Republicans think they can quickly jam through a whole slate of nominees without a fair hearing process, they’re sorely mistaken,” Schumer said recently. He added, “President-elect Trump is attempting to fill his rigged cabinet with nominees that would break key campaign promises and have made billions off the industries they’d be tasked with regulating.”

Among the eight Cabinet picks Schumer and the Democrats plan to focus their efforts on are Trump’s secretary of state pick Rex Tillerson; his choice for attorney general, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL); treasury secretary pick Steve Mnuchin.

According to the Washington Post, retired Marine Gen. James “Mad Dog” Mattis, Trump’s pick for defense secretary; South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Trump’s nominee to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; and former Marine general John Kelly, tapped to lead the Department of Homeland Security. are absent from the Democrats’ “hit list.”

Follow Adelle Nazarian on Twitter and Periscope @AdelleNaz
 
Schumer lies.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/schumer-preparing-for-nuclear-option-to-ram-through-health-care-bill/article/239897


Politico:Baucus has until Sept. 15 to reach an agreement with Republicans -- and that is still the goal. "But if we don't, it is not going to stop us from moving forward with health care," Schumer told reporters Monday. "If the Republicans are not able to produce an agreement (by then), we will have contingencies in place. Health reform is just too important to let this window pass by." Among the options is invoking a procedural maneuver known as reconciliation, which would allow Senate Democrats to pass a bill with a simple majority rather than a 60-vote filibuster-proof threshold.


Ezra Klein writes that this "won't work":Of late, Jonathan Zasloff has been arguing that the traditional objections to the reconciliation process don't apply. According to him, this is all just false consciousness on the part of cowed Democrats. It may be that the rules of the reconciliation process makes much of health-care reform ineligible for reconciliation, and it may be that the Senate parliamentarian will say that explicitly to the chair of the Senate, but the chair of the Senate can simply, for the first time ever, ignore the parliamentarian's rulings and break what everybody understands to be the rules and pass heath-care reform that way! It won't work. The problem with breaking the rules -- or, more to the point, using them in unintended ways -- is that anyone can do it. Remember when minority Democrats were threatening to "shut down the Senate" when Bill Frist eliminated the filibuster for judicial nominees? It wasn't an idle threat. They could well have shut down the Senate. Nearly all Senate business requires unanimous consent to proceed. Republicans are no less aware of this fact than Democrats were. If Democrats try to invoke reconciliation and then override the parliamentarian and rewrite the Senate rulebook on the fly, the GOP will quickly and easily close down the chamber.
 
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