How Long Has Mcconnell Been Working To Put Change The Makeup Of The Court System

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and fellow Republicans set a precedent for the Senate on Th, changing rules for Supreme Court confirmations and easing the process for nominee Neil Gorsuch. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

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Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and fellow Republicans fix a precedent for the Senate on Thursday, changing rules for Supreme Court confirmations and easing the process for nominee Neil Gorsuch.

Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

This is how the Senate changes — non with a bang, but with a move to overturn the ruling of the chair.

By a simple bulk vote, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., set a new precedent in the Senate that will ease the confirmation for President Trump'south Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch on Friday, after 30 more hours of debate on the floor.

"This will be the starting time, and last, partisan filibuster of a Supreme Courtroom justice," said McConnell in a closing floor speech.

Senate Democrats voted against ending fence on Gorsuch'due south nomination on a almost party-line vote, leaving Republicans shy the sixty-vote hurdle required by Senate rules to move on to a terminal confirmation vote.

Democrats opposed Gorsuch for a diversity of reasons, including his conservative judicial philosophy, dissatisfaction with his answers during his confirmation hearings and a simmering resentment towards McConnell'due south conclusion to block whatsoever consideration of President Obama's nominee Merrick Garland terminal year.

"We believe that what Republicans did to Merrick Garland was worse than a filibuster," said Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.

So McConnell then, as promised, used the power of his position and with all of his GOP colleagues lined upwards behind him, to substantially change the rules of the Senate — to lower that threshold on Supreme Courtroom nominations to terminate debate from 60 to 51 votes. The change did not affect the legislative filibuster.

McConnell made a indicate of order that ending debate on the nomination only requires a simple majority. The motion was not sustained past the chair because Senate rules required 60 votes, then McConnell then made a motion to overturn that ruling. And one time that movement passed on a political party-line vote, the Gorsuch nomination only needed 51 votes to clear the hurdle.

That balmy-sounding parliamentary maneuver has the most destructive nickname, "the nuclear pick," because it contains sweeping impact on the Senate, President Trump and all of his successors — and the nation every bit a whole.

Past substantially eliminating the delay for Supreme Court nominees — an extension of the 2013 nuclear option triggered by and then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., for all lower court and executive branch nominees — all presidential nominees will now face a far easier path navigating through the Senate confirmation procedure. It as well could get in easier for presidents to appoint more than overtly partisan justices to the Supreme Court.

The alter will besides test the character of the Senate and the people who serve in information technology, and lay bare whether the upper chamber is slowly lurching towards becoming more like the majority-driven and reactionary Business firm of Representatives, where the minority party has picayune substantive role.

Opponents of easing the delay warn that the next and likely step is to eliminate the legislative filibuster, which allows any 1 senator to hold up a piece of legislation and requires a sixty-vote threshold to break the logjam and move such a nib forward. Critics of the delay say the maneuver is abused and used then regularly that it has rendered the Senate incapable of interim on even routine legislative matters.

The filibuster and the rights it gives to individual senators and the minority party are reasons why the Senate has long considered itself "the greatest deliberative trunk in the earth."

But the employ of filibusters and the polarization between the two parties have dramatically increased in the past two decades, making information technology harder and harder for the Senate to reach bipartisan consensus even on matters like the annual 12 spending bills.

The impact of McConnell'due south move Thursday is a matter of heated contend, and its long-term effects are unpredictable. Advocates of irresolute the Senate rules on filibusters say it may be a necessary evolution for a polarized Congress to function in the mod era, while opponents say it threatens to send the nation farther downward a path where the two parties are and then opposed that bipartisanship and centrism are relics of another era.

"Today's vote is a cautionary tale about how unbridled partisan escalation can ultimately overwhelm our basic inclination to work together, and frustrate our efforts to pull back, blocking the states from steering the ship of the Senate away from the rocks," Schumer said.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2017/04/06/522847700/senate-pulls-nuclear-trigger-to-ease-gorsuch-confirmation

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