{"id":3420,"date":"2014-05-22T12:11:41","date_gmt":"2014-05-22T16:11:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/?p=3420"},"modified":"2014-06-02T15:18:49","modified_gmt":"2014-06-02T19:18:49","slug":"the-end-of-the-filibuster-not-quite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/2014\/05\/the-end-of-the-filibuster-not-quite\/","title":{"rendered":"The end of the filibuster? Not quite"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/msnbc\/rand-paul-senate-end-of-filibuster\"><img src='http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/senate_keystone_pipeline.jpeg-0b9c2.jpg' alt='' \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Reid\u2019s rule change can be credited with securing confirmations for at least fourteen nominees, including Richard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; Melvin Watt, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency; John Koskinen, commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service; Janet Yellen, chair of the Federal Reserve Board; and\u00a0three D.C. Circuit judges.<\/p>\n<p>But the process grinds on slowly.<\/p>\n<p>Much of what the Senate does requires a vote of \u201cunanimous consent\u201d to move forward. The minority party can block that by forcing a cloture vote, even when it knows it lacks the necessary 51 votes to block a nominee.<\/p>\n<p>One way to measure the childishness of such maneuvers is to note the disparity between cloture vote and final confirmation. Thirteen times since the rules change, GOP senators have forced a cloture vote on a judicial nominee who ended up winning unanimous approval on confirmation. That means even the person who blocked unanimous consent ended up voting to confirm. For instance, the March 5 vote to end debate on Timothy Brooks, a district court nominee in Arkansas, was 59-41. Under the previous rule, which required 60 votes to break a filibuster, Brooks\u2019 nomination would have halted right there. Under the new rule, 59 votes was more than enough to proceed to a vote on the nomination itself, which passed unanimously. That means all 41 senators who voted to block a confirmation vote\u2014all of them Republicans\u2014deemed Brooks sufficiently qualified to confirm. They just wanted to delay. A mere four Republicans who were going to vote for Brooks anyway voted in favor of cloture.<\/p>\n<p>via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/msnbc\/rand-paul-senate-end-of-filibuster\">The end of the filibuster? Not quite | MSNBC<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reid\u2019s rule change can be credited with securing confirmations for at least fourteen nominees, including Richard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; Melvin Watt, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency; John Koskinen, commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service; Janet Yellen, chair of the Federal Reserve Board; and\u00a0three D.C. Circuit judges. But the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[19,22],"tags":[1715,796,1451,789,196],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3420"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3420"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3459,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3420\/revisions\/3459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}