On the Year Anniversary of Senate Rules Reform, More Work Remains to Be Done

On November 21, 2013, the United States Senate reformed its rules to eliminate filibusters on executive branch nominations and federal judicial appointments other than those to the Supreme Court. It worked. Up to a point.

Tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of that historic rules change and a key coalition that fought for that common sense action is asking Americans to again call their Senators and tell them they cannot leave Washington without voting on nearly 150 key nominations that are still pending.

GOP senators, intent on thwarting President Obama, are using cloture to waste maximum time in the confirmation of even non-controversial nominees. In 2014 alone, the GOP blocked votes on more than two dozen nominations that they later voted unanimously to confirm.

The Fix the Senate Now coalition – part of the Democracy Initiative that CWA convened with groups like Alliance for Justice, Sierra Club, Common Cause, USAction, Daily Kos, NAACP, UAW, NY Citizen Action, Working Families Party and others to work on senate rules reform and other democracy issues – last year mobilized 200,000 members to call and email senators.

The resulting rules change meant that in May 2014, for instance, the Senate confirmed 22 judicial nominees. The broken Senate rules had kept the National Labor Relations Board from having a full slate of commissioners, limiting what it could do. The coalition pushed the Senate to confirm the first full slate of NLRB members. As part of that effort, the Senate also confirmed leaders for other top agencies, including Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Gina McCarthy to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.

Today, as the 113th Congress comes to an end December 31st, Democracy Initiative organizations – whose memberships number more than 50 million people – are urging simple up or down votes on pending judicial appointments, ambassadorships and vacancies in executive offices charged with protecting worker safety, the traveling public and other key government functions.

At the same time, Democracy Initiative organizations are also asking the Senate to continue pursuing reforms that bolster accountability and transparency – keys in a democracy – while refraining from the partisan obstruction-for-obstruction's-sake actions that anger the American people.

Ultimately, the Senate should prioritize moving nominees forward during its remaining weeks in session – part of the job it was elected to do.