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That's exactly why they're doing it now. Internal numbers suggest they'll lose control of the Senate in 2014. They have 11 months to pack the courts and get whatever they can pushed through now before they lose the majority. 2014-2016 they'll just toil under Republican rule and survive by Obama's veto. They plan on retaking the Senate, and possibly the House, in 2016 riding the wave of votes for President Hillary Clinton.
Guilty in reverse.
So why weren't the Dems behind this 8 years ago? I'm fine if people want to make a change, but how about trying to do at some time other than when it benefits your side and hurts the other side.
Honestly, while there is no doubt that this is simply a partisan game, I'm all for passing some legislation to limit filibusters. If it bites the Democrats down the road, good.
I think everyone agrees that this is all about politics. Parties don't do stuff to deliberately diminish their power without a good reason.
I don't know what he means by "20 blocked." I think there have only been five nominees to the D.C. Circuit during Obama's administration, and so far one has gotten through.
And there's often no reason given for the obstruction either. Many of them are centrist judges with good reputations among both parties.
Hold on, I may have limited it to the DC Court in error.
Yeah that means all district court judges nationally. Where did you get the numbers from?
LInk?
You're still off. Obama has only had 3 blocked from what I can tell from all the news articles. Bush had 5 blocked, and 2 failed. Hardly the massive swing you're indicating.
There are three pending nominations that are currently being held up. There was another Obama nomination to the D.C. Circuit that was withdrawn earlier this year after having been filibustered.
OK, I don't know if what Reid says is true, but district court judges are the lowest-level trial judges. The D.C. Circuit is an appeals court. He's using a statistic that doesn't seem 100% applicable to what has prompted the Dems to reconsider the filibuster rules.
No, those weren't filibusters. Harry Reid's stat seems misleading, but probably isn't a "lie."
"The president has had 1,540 of his nominations confirmed, only four defeated."Mitch McConnell on Sunday, July 14th, 2013 in an interview on 'Meet the Press'
Obama has had 1,540 nominations confirmed and only 4 defeated, says McConnellShare this story:
The long-running Senate battle between Democrats and Republicans over the filibuster and delays in processing President Barack Obama’s nominations came to the brink this past week.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., threatened to use the so-called nuclear option and set aside the 60-vote majority needed to close debate and bring a nomination to the floor. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said if Reid did that, he was "going to be remembered as the worst leader of the Senate ever."
The two sides healed the breach after many urgent phone calls and a meeting of every senator in the Old Senate Chamber, a room one lawmaker called "hallowed ground."
But before the return to relative civility, McConnell had been on NBC’s Meet the Press where he argued that the president had done pretty well for himself. "What is the problem here?" McConnell asked. "The president has had 1,540 of his nominations confirmed, only four defeated."
McConnell’s office said he meant to say 1,560. We checked, and he did use the correct number just three days earlier. We also looked at the Library of Congress nominations database for Obama’s first and second terms and confirmed McConnell’s numbers.
But what drew our attention was McConnell’s claim that only four had been defeated. That number refers to people who failed on a measure to end debate (called "cloture) and send their names to the floor for a simple majority vote. It takes 60 votes to end debate.
McConnell’s list includes Craig Becker (National Labor Relations Board), Caitlin Joan Halligan (U.S. Circuit judge), Goodwin Liu (U.S. Circuit judge), and Richard Cordray (director, Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection).
However, that doesn’t account for many of the people Obama put forward who have withdrawn due to opposition from Senate Republicans.
"McConnell is using misleading numbers," said Ian Ostrander, a political scientist at Texas Tech University. "He’s taking advantage of the fact that very few nominations actually fail through a direct vote."
There are many ways to stymie a nomination. There is the threat of filibuster which requires clearing the 60-vote majority to end debate.
Alternatively, opponents can run out the clock and return the nomination to the White House with no vote at all, generally right before the summer recess or at the end of the year.
Or an individual senator, anonymously or publicly, can place a hold and block a nomination from moving forward.
Ostrander said that the White House might withdraw a nomination, or never put someone’s name forward if minority opposition seems too strong. He cited the examples of Susan Rice, Obama’s first choice for Secretary of State, and Elizabeth Warren, his first pick to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Neither was ever formally nominated.
Republicans didn’t like key aspects of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the first place. In May 2011, 44 GOP senators sent a letter to the administration saying they "will not support the consideration of any nominee, regardless of party affiliation" until changes were made. When Obama replaced Warren with Richard Cordray, it made no difference in the Republican position.
Cordray was the first stalled nominee to win confirmation immediately after the deal that averted the crisis in the Senate.
Occasionally, Ostrander said, the nominee on their own steps back due to long delays. He put Federal Reserve Board nominee Peter Diamond in this category. Diamond, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, was nominated three times. Twice in 2010, the Senate did not reject him; it simply made no decision and returned the nomination to the White House.
Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., worked hard against the nomination and never backed down. The White House nominated Diamond a third time in June 2011, but he withdrew saying he saw that his name would never make it to the Senate floor.
Ostrander has studied more than two decades of non-judicial nominations. His doctoral thesis: Winning the Waiting Game: Senatorial Delay in Executive Nominations.
Ostrander has detailed at what point nominations failed in the nomination process: 84 percent stalled or were withdrawn before going before a committee. Another 0.03 percent were rejected by a committee vote, while 0.01 percent were rejected in a floor vote.
"McConnell is choosing to count as failures cases that only account for a small fraction of overall failures," Ostrander said.
Overall, 69 of Obama’s nominees withdrew for any reason since 2009. During the first term, Ostrander said he counts 38 who likely pulled out under pressure from Republican opposition.
We reviewed in detail 12 instances (beyond McConnell’s four) where nominees withdrew after encountering opposition, either to their specific background or to Obama’s policies. Those include Donald Berwick to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Erroll Southers to lead for the Transportation Security Administration, Michael Mundaca for the Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Policy, and Dawn Johnsen to be assistant attorney general, among others.
There is an additional issue with McConnell’s measure of Obama’s success rate. We contacted five other political scientists, and they agreed that McConnell’s statement overlooked the impact of delayed nominations even if they ultimately win confirmation.
In the book Defending the Filibuster: The Soul of the Senate, Richard A. Arenberg and Robert B. Dove said the filibuster is a moderating force and a check on executive power. We asked Arenberg if McConnell’s point about the president’s track record on confirmations was valid.
"Clearly, it's not only the final outcome that matters," Arenberg said. "Delay in confirmation can certainly hamper an executive agency."
Michael Gerhardt, a law professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law, has studied the nomination process. "The problem is not just the delays; it is the limited authority of an acting or temporary head," Gerhardt said. "Here, the statistics might not accurately capture the harm done to the executive branch."
Our ruling
McConnell said Obama faced no real problems getting his nominees confirmed by the Senate, saying that only four of 1,540 nominations had been defeated. His office later said he misspoke and the number should have been 1,560.
We find he's partially accurate but is leaving out some important details. Yes, it's true that when nominations reach a final vote, the vast majority have been approved by the Senate. But this accounting ignores those who withdrew before a vote, including the estimated 38 who withdrew after Republican opposition. It also does not account for high-profile figures such as Susan Rice who were never nominated because of opposition.
We rate the claim Half True.
I may be mistaken, but I believe the term "packing the court" only refers to situations in which nominees are to create new seats, not fill empty ones.
I don't think Senate confirmation should just be a rubber stamp.
Senators should be able to vote against nominees that they believe to be ideologically extreme.
Typically that's the case. But in this instance the vacancies are not new seats. (Though I've been WREUNG twice today already. So caveat emptor.)
Dems hold the White House until January 2017, that's the earliest that this could really blow up in their faces.
You guys are just speaking past each other, you're in agreement here but Sarnoff missed that wdcrob was quoting B.S. Republican talking points.
I'm pretty sure we've even argued in the past with me saying that presidents should generally get their nominees. As Obama might say, elections have consequences.
I think you are underselling this. Obama will now be able to go a long way towards reshaping the judicial branch. Hopefully he'll have names ready to fill every vacancy soon.
Nah. Some cute chick shot a lion and took a picture smiling. There are far more important things going on right now.
