You Want A Scandal? Here’s A Scandal<\/a> by Jonathan Bernstein in The Washington Post.<\/p>\nThe Text:<\/strong> Want a real Washington scandal \u2014 one worse than the (phony) Benghazi scandal and the (apparently real, but apparently limited) IRS scandals combined? Try the continuing, and possibly accelerating, obstruction of executive branch nominees by Senate Republicans.<\/p>\nDon\u2019t think it\u2019s a scandal? It\u2019s pretty basic: Republicans, by abusing their Constitutional powers, are \u2014 deliberately, in several cases \u2014 preventing the government from carrying out duly passed laws.<\/p>\n
The New York Times yesterday highlighted two of the more recent ways that Republicans have manipulated loopholes in Senate rules to delay confirmation of Secretary of Labor nominee Thomas Perez and Environmental Protection Agency nominee Gina McCarthy. It\u2019s worth stepping back and realizing: what\u2019s happening here is that Republicans are delaying these nominations beyond their eventual insistence that almost all nominees must get 60 votes. In other words, they\u2019re filibustering on top of their own filibusters.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
That\u2019s just two examples. There are numerous others; again, with virtually all nominees required to have 60 votes, one can accurately say that Republicans are filibustering every nomination. But perhaps the worst are the \u201cnullification\u201d filibusters, in which Republicans simply refuse to approve any nominee at all for some positions \u2014 the National Labor Relations Board, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau \u2014 because they don\u2019t want those agencies to carry out their statutory obligations.<\/p>\n
In doing so, Republicans are not breaking the rules of the Senate. They are, however, breaking the Senate itself, and harming the government. As with all legislative chambers, and in fact all democratic institutions, the Senate runs on a combination of formal rules and informal norms. But Republicans, by refusing to accept those norms, make it impossible for the normal machinery of government to function.<\/p>\n
And remember that this is entirely unprecedented. Until very recently, simple majority confirmation was the norm on executive branch nominations with only a handful of exceptions. Not only that, but both Democrats and Republicans agreed that in almost all cases presidents were entitled to their choices when it came to these posts.<\/p>\n
As I\u2019ve said before, the only recourse for the majority \u2014 and recall that Democrats enjoy a 55-seat duly elected majority in the Senate \u2014 is to threaten to change the rules if Republicans continue, and then carry out that threat with majority-imposed reform to end filibusters on executive branch nominations altogether. But that would be a loss for the Senate if it had to happen. It\u2019s not a bad thing at all to give the minority party a larger role in the process, and filibusters are part of that; but if filibusters become routine instead of used only for those things the minority objects to the strongest, then the majority will have little choice.<\/p>\n
Yes, I know that in the way Washington works, this kind of routine disruption of normal government procedures doesn\u2019t qualify as a Scandal! But it should. And while it\u2019s quite proper for those concerned about good government to be outraged by the IRS story, this one is a much bigger deal, and the facts of it are plain for all to see \u2014 in fact, the people responsible are openly bragging about what they\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n
Now that\u2019s a scandal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Article: You Want A Scandal? Here’s A Scandal by Jonathan Bernstein in The Washington Post. The Text: Want a real Washington scandal \u2014 one worse than the (phony) Benghazi scandal and the (apparently real, but apparently limited) IRS scandals combined? Try the continuing, and possibly accelerating, obstruction of executive branch nominees by Senate Republicans. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[259],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"DC\"](\"http:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/dc.jpg\")
<\/p>\n