For the Missouri Comrpomise it was 36-30 or fight.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri_Compromise
For Harry Reid it's the GOP better confirm Cordray to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or fight. The nuclear option is clearly on the table again-though Reid can't quite admit it yet. He has to win over enough of the old bulldog Dems to get the needed 51 votes that would alter the rules on filibusters-they would no longer be used on executive nominations.
A lot of the older bulldog Dems have an understandable concern-they've been in the minority. Yet if the concerns are clear I still don't find this wholly persuasive:
“He indicated we’re going to spend some time on the subject a little later,” said Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “I’ve never been in favor of it, because I think it will do some serious [damage to] the potential of getting some things done around here.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/harry-reid-mulling-filibuster-overhaul-91786_Page3.html#ixzz2U8Pulaug
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri_Compromise
For Harry Reid it's the GOP better confirm Cordray to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or fight. The nuclear option is clearly on the table again-though Reid can't quite admit it yet. He has to win over enough of the old bulldog Dems to get the needed 51 votes that would alter the rules on filibusters-they would no longer be used on executive nominations.
A lot of the older bulldog Dems have an understandable concern-they've been in the minority. Yet if the concerns are clear I still don't find this wholly persuasive:
“He indicated we’re going to spend some time on the subject a little later,” said Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “I’ve never been in favor of it, because I think it will do some serious [damage to] the potential of getting some things done around here.”
"Pryor, perhaps the most endangered Democratic incumbent heading into 2014, expressed fears that it would make it harder to move bipartisan measures through the Senate."
“You’re seeing some signs of bipartisanship here. You have an immigration bill that is biparitsan, you have the [Water Resources Development Act] bill that passed in a big bipartisan vote, you have the farm bill you have right now is bipartisan,” Pryor said.
"Reid sidestepped a filibuster fight at the beginning of the year, when he cut a deal with McConnell and preserved senators’ rights to filibuster, only changing the procedures in a handful of situations aimed at speeding up the process when there’s overwhelming consensus in the Senate."
"Levin, who helped craft that deal, said it has eased the partisan gridlock somewhat but acknowledged it wasn’t sufficient."
“It hasn’t solved all the problems, but it’s helped to set a tone to try to solve problems on a bipartisan basis, and it’s important that tone continue,” Levin said. “I’ve never been in favor of it, because I think it will do some serious of the potential of getting some things done around here.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/harry-reid-mulling-filibuster-overhaul-91786_Page3.html#ixzz2U8Pulaug
I mean saying that we shouldn't change the filibuster as we won't get anything done is kind of ironic as we already can't get anything done. I know the threats about this becoming just like the House, but in many ways the Senate needs changing. So much of the protocol and traditions of the Senate are from an era where the slave holding Southern minority bulled through rules that gave it power at the expense of the minority-just like the Missouri Compromise. We still see that now-the minority running the show between the filibustered Senate and the gerrymandered House.
Even the most trivial or noncontroversial nominees have been filibustered. We have seen a record-far out of proportion to all history-of GOP filibusters since 2009. The status quo is no longer worth saving.
"Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is waging an under-the-radar campaign to get his fellow Democrats to back a summertime fight to overhaul the filibuster for executive branch nominees.
Reid is carrying a list of names to target and has met with about two dozen Democrats on the issue thus far, focusing on “Old Bull” senators and skeptics of rules changes, according to senators and aides familiar with the talks."
"Publicly, Reid has been coy about whether he’ll try to alter the Senate’s hugely controversial rules to help confirm President Barack Obama’s nominees: “I’m not getting into changing the rules,” he said this week."
"But it’s clear the majority leader wants to get something done and find 51 Democrats to support an unprecedented move to employ the so-called nuclear option — changing the rules so executive branch nominees can no longer be blocked by filibusters requiring 60 votes to break."
McCain gets it. He fully understands how bad the GOP looks in refusing to send the Senate Dems's budget to conference after knocking them for years in not writing a budget. He also gets that frustration with GOP obstruction will hit a tipping point. While he says that the nuclear option would "destroy the institution" of the Senate:
“I think it would destroy the institution,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). “I’m not sure it would have that effect on immigration [legislation]; I just think it would have a profound effect on the institution. Sooner or later, the rights of the minority would be so diminished.
He also gets that the GOP's unreasonable obstruction may push Dems to finally go here:
"Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) took to the floor Thursday to again criticize his Republican colleagues for blocking the initiation of House-Senate budget negotiations."
"You will win in the end if your cause is just," he said. "There's a majority of us who want the Congress to work the peoples' will."
"He added that if Republicans "continue to block things like this and block what is the regular order," then Democrats "will be tempted to change the rules of the Senate. That would be the most disastrous outcome that I could ever imagine."
Meanwhile, in the 'first test-case' of Reid's 'nuclear option push' McConnell is acknowledging that Reid's threat is very real. It came in Sri Srinivasan, whom President Obama nominated to serve on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.
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