Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell this week is expected to bypass Democrats and eliminate the filibuster on Supreme Court nominations in order to place Judge Neil Gorsuch, President Donald Trump's nominee, on the the high court. But should Republicans choose this so-called "nuclear option"?
The Senate filibuster, which was first used in 1837, allows the minority party to block majority party nominations or legislation. Ending a filibuster and allowing a final vote to proceed currently requires a supermajority, or 60 votes, as opposed to a simple majority. When it comes to the Supreme Court, then, the filibuster is meant to discourage the right or left from nominating political ideologues to the high court: Swerve too far to the fringes, and risk an indefinite block on your nominee.
But Republican control in the Senate and White House endanger the filibuster's future. Democrats, opposed to Gorsuch and smarting from Republicans' refusal to vote last year on Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, have the 41 votes required to filibuster Gorsuch. Yet McConnell has vowed to kill the rule and push Trump's nominee through.
The upshot, some say, is devastating. Nuking the filibuster will eliminate an important check on the party in power. "Removing the filibuster for the high court reduces the incentive for presidents dealing with a Senate controlled by their own party to ever nominate a moderate justice," writes U.S. News & World Report's Robert Schlesinger. "[F]orcing the issue over Gorsuch ... would just mean that President Donald Trump could nominate a conservative flame-thrower to replace a Ruth Bader Ginsburg next year and Democrats would be powerless to stop it."
Others argue the rule's demise is long overdue. "The filibuster is utterly out of control," argues Pat Garofalo, also at U.S. News. It's overuse, he says, has made the Senate "a de facto 60-vote body, where next to nothing gets done with a simple majority." In other words, what's the point of winning elections if your agenda is indefinitely impeded? With the filibuster in place, obstructionism will be met with obstructionism, as Democrats plan to do this week, and "on and on it will go," writes Garofalo.
So should the Senate blow up the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees? Here's our Debate Club's take.