Update on Senate Rules

Over the six years of the Obama administration, Senate Republicans have used gridlock and obstruction to block progressive legislation and executive branch and judicial appointments from moving forward.

The Senate remains dysfunctional, but the Senate rules campaign led by CWA and allies, that resulted in two rounds of rules changes last year, has resulted in action on executive and judicial nominations.

CWA, working with the Fix the Senate Now coalition, was a driving force in winning the rules changes that helped break Senate gridlock and allow the president’s nominations to receive an up-or-down vote. In summer 2013, 2 million members of Fix the Senate Now organizations mobilized to make sure the Senate confirmed a full, five-member National Labor Relations Board and leaders for top agencies including Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Gina McCarthy to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.

Later in the year, activists from CWA, Alliance for Justice, Sierra Club, Common Cause, USAction, Daily Kos, NAACP, UAW, NY Citizen Action, Working Families Party and others again revved up mobilization, with 200,000 members of those groups generating calls and emails to their senators.

That rule change meant a simple majority vote could confirm executive and most judicial appointments, and the pace of confirmation has quickened. Although Republicans continue to slow down confirmations and Senate business overall, without the arbitrary 60-vote threshold to advance a nomination, more judges are getting confirmed. In May, for instance, the Senate confirmed 22 judicial nominees.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid credited CWA and President Cohen for leading the fight to change the Senate rules.

Reid: “We changed the rules because we had to change the rules. Did we change them enough? Time will only tell, but now I have just four district court judges awaiting confirmation, and one circuit court judge. I have two that reported out of committee today.

“For the first time since I can remember, a majority of the federal circuit courts now have Democratic presidential appointments. That’s pretty good.”

Still, too many bills never get to the Senate floor for debate, crushed by the Senate rules, despite the fact that a majority of the Senate supports them, like programs to benefit working families, from extending unemployment insurance to support for veterans to a bill to allow students to refinance their crushing student loan debt.

The broken Senate rules remain a real block to democracy and to programs that benefit working families.