It’s probably Chuck Schumer’s single biggest regret now

Posted by | January 4, 2017 09:28 | Filed under: Politics

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… because the GOP accomplices to the game show host who is about to enter the Oval Office can more easily steamroll many of his extreme and unqualified appointees through the Senate:

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) says he regrets the decision by Democrats in 2013 to trigger the “nuclear option” for most presidential nominations.

The change to the Senate rules lowered the threshold for confirming Cabinet nominees to a simple majority vote — something that will now help President-elect Donald Trump push through his nominees.

“I argued against it at the time. I said both for Supreme Court and in Cabinet should be 60 because on such important positions there should be some degree of bipartisanship,” Schumer told CNN.

“I won on Supreme Court, lost on Cabinet. But it’s what we have to live with now.”

The “nuclear option” was triggered by former Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who retired at the end of the last Congress. Schumer is taking his place as leader of Senate Democrats in the new Congress.

In 2013, Democrats in the Senate altered the filibuster rules, lowering the number of senators needed to confirm presidential nominees from 60 to a simple majority of 51. Supreme Court nominations were excluded from the change.

The rule change was approved on a majority line vote, a tactic that had long been dubbed the nuclear option because of its potential to blow up bipartisan relations in the Senate.


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Copyright 2017 Liberaland
By: dave-dr-gonzo

David Hirsch, a.k.a. Dave "Doctor" Gonzo*, is a renegade record producer, video producer, writer, reformed corporate shill, and still-registered lobbyist for non-one-percenter performing artists and musicians. He lives in a heavily fortified compound in one of Manhattan's less trendy neighborhoods.

* Hirsch is the third person to use the pseudonym, a not-so-veiled tribute to journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson, with the permission of his predecessors Gene Gaudette of American Politics Journal (currently webmaster and chief bottlewasher at Liberaland) and Stephen Meese at Smashmouth Politics.

10 responses to It’s probably Chuck Schumer’s single biggest regret now

  1. Buford2k11 January 4th, 2017 at 09:38

    This downside was discussed way back when they first started to do away with it…we knew the danger, yet they still did it…and it was not worth the effort…

  2. Mensa Member January 4th, 2017 at 10:02

    Schumer is not the problem.

    The problem is that the Republicans were shamelessly abusing the filibuster rule. Schumer was trying to get the government working, as intended.

  3. StoneyCurtisll January 4th, 2017 at 10:16

    Great interview with Trump by Stephen Colbert…
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1Ys1iKdrXY

    • Suzanne McFly January 4th, 2017 at 14:27

      Ugh, how I wish rump could be interviewed by Colbert.

  4. Bunya January 4th, 2017 at 14:10

    Maybe the democrats should start playing hardball, and if it means cheating to get what the people want, so be it.

  5. eyelashviper January 4th, 2017 at 15:10

    It will only take a few Gopers to stop tRump and the rest of the insane Goper Senators. Schumer needs to be courting Susan Collins and the few others that have some small measure of sanity and ethics remaining.l

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