The President's Nominees Deserve an Up-or-Down Vote

In a Huffington Post blog post, CWA President Larry Cohen laid out why the Senate minority's decision to block a vote on the nomination of Rep. Mel Watt (D-N.C.) to lead the Federal Housing Finance Agency was "a new low."

Cohen said Republicans' obstruction of Watt's nomination and that of Patricia Millett, who was nominated to fill one of three vacancies on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, clearly shows why Majority Leader Harry Reid must move forward to fix the broken Senate rules.

"It is past time for Democrats to take this small step so that millions of American who voted for this Senate and this president have at least this small bit of their voices heard," he wrote.

Read the full post here.

Never before has cloture been used to prevent a sitting member of Congress from a presidential appointment. The Senate's constitutional obligation is to advise and consent, not obstruct. In our democracy, all of the president's nominees deserve an up-or-down vote.

Earlier this year, Reid stood up to the obstructionists and won confirmation votes for the president's nominees. To counter this current round of obstruction, the majority leader should use the procedural motion that's been used 17 times since 1978 to move these nominees to a vote.