Republicans provoked 'nuclear option': Our
view
The Editorial Board, USA TODAY November 21, 2013
Democrats' decision Thursday to change Senate rules so they
can confirm presidential nominees without Republican support is sure to worsen
partisanship in a body that is already dangerously dysfunctional.
Republicans instantly promised to retaliate, and important
national business — the current budget negotiations, for example, or attempts to
head off another government shutdown — could suffer.
MITCH MCCONNELL: Democrats' power grab
Even so, the Senate's GOP minority brought the rules change,
known as the "nuclear option," on itself. The Republicans' repeated abuse of the
filibuster to block highly qualified nominees simply because they were picked by
a Democratic president had left Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., with
little choice.
When it comes to abusing the filibuster, particularly on
judicial nominations, neither party has clean hands. Democrats did it during the
George W. Bush administration, and in 2005 then-Sen. Barack Obama was among
those denouncing the nuclear option. The two parties shamelessly swap arguments
and tactics whenever the majority changes hands.
Little by little, they've eroded an honorable system in which
each party acknowledged the president's constitutional right to make
appointments, reserving filibusters only for extreme circumstances, where they
have important value in encouraging bipartisanship.
This time, Republicans took the filibuster to new levels by
making it destructively commonplace. In the past month alone, GOP senators have
blocked Obama's nominee to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency, plus three well-qualified nominees to the D.C. Circuit Court of
Appeals.
So now, as a result of Thursday's move, all of President
Obama's nominees except those for the Supreme Court can be approved by a simple
majority, rather than the 60 vote majority required to end a
filibuster.
GOP senators' operatic outrage after Thursday's vote belied
the fact that they provoked this outcome by refusing to work out the kind of
deals that had defused previous confrontations. This year, Republicans twice
backed down and agreed to curb their filibusters, and both times they
reneged.
The last straw was their effort to prevent Obama from filling
open seats on the D.C. Circuit Court, commonly regarded as the second most
important court in the nation because it decides pivotal questions of government
regulation and often serves as a stepping stone to the Supreme
Court.
Republicans accused Obama of court-packing — an allusion to
Franklin Roosevelt's attempt to expand a Supreme Court that was blocking the New
Deal.
But that claim is ludicrous. Three seats are vacant.
Republicans also say the court should be reduced in size because it is
underworked. But if they were sincere, they could propose to shrink the court in
the next presidency.
It's regrettable that cooler heads couldn't prevail. The
Senate's paralysis could get worse in the short run, and when Democrats are back
in the minority, which could happen after next year's elections, they'll no
doubt regret detonating the nuclear option. All institutions need rules that
everyone accepts.
But don't believe Republicans when they say this is all the
fault of Democrats. If the filibuster is dying, it's because both parties have
conspired to kill it.
USA TODAY's editorial opinions are decided by its Editorial
Board, separate from the news staff. Most editorials are
coupled with an opposing view — a unique USA
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