Reid could drop his threat if Republicans end filibusters on some nominees. Reid: 'I ate sh--' on nominees

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s threat to change filibuster rules is supposed to narrowly focus on presidential nominees to the executive branch.

But his potential move to invoke the “nuclear option” is raising a bigger and more sweeping question that could have huge consequences for future presidents of both parties: Is this the beginning of the end of the filibuster? If the filibuster goes, the Senate would lose a crucial check on majority rights — and it could start looking very much like the House, where the majority always gets its way.


For years, the filibuster has been increasingly used as a tool to block, delay and frustrate the will of the majority party to push through its agenda. While the filibuster has been changed periodically over the years, senators have never successfully made good on their threat to impose the “nuclear option” — changing Senate cloture rules by 51 votes, rather than 67 — for fear it would hurt them one day when they were back in the minority.

( PHOTOS: Longest filibusters in history)

But those days may now be over.

On Monday, Reid informed President Barack Obama about his intention to use the nuclear option if no deal is struck, sources said, and Obama signaled he would support the effort.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who is trying to head off the high-stakes fight, privately reached out to Vice President Joe Biden, but it’s expected that Biden would vote with Democrats in case there’s a 50-50 tie.

The crisis could still be averted. Reid signaled that he would drop the threat of the nuclear option if Republicans ended their filibusters on pending Obama nominees .

But senators in both parties agreed Thursday that if Reid moves to change the rules by 51 votes, it would be used by the majority in the future to further weaken the filibuster, potentially eliminating the potent procedural weapon altogether one day. While Democrats said they were willing to roll the dice on the nuclear option, believing the GOP would go that route anyway when they get back in the majority, Republicans said Reid’s move all but assured a continued weakening — and eventual demolition — of the filibuster.

( Also on POLITICO: Reid slams McConnell, ready for nuclear option)

But Reid said privately it is time to make a change.

In a closed-door caucus meeting Thursday, Reid began by apologizing to his colleagues for cutting bipartisan deals to avert the nuclear option, including at the beginning of this year. And the Nevada Democrat complained that he allowed votes on scores of conservative nominees under former President George W. Bush after a bipartisan coalition headed off the nuclear option in 2005. But Reid said it had been the right thing to do because Bush had won a second term in the White House.

Now, Reid argued, times have changed.

“I ate sh— on some of those nominees,” Reid told his colleagues, according to sources who were present.

On Thursday, the Senate continued to inch closer to a battle that could have dramatic implications for the institution.

“I don’t know how you open that door and not go to the next level. First, it’s executive nominations, next thing it’ll be judicial nominations, then it will be legislative filibusters,” said South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the No. 3 Senate Republican. “The precedent they set here will be not only long-lasting but far-reaching.”

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Under Reid’s proposal, the Senate would no longer need 60 votes to break a filibuster on executive branch positions, bringing down that threshold to 51 votes. Senators would face a 60-vote requirement to end filibusters on legislation and judicial nominees.

At the heart of the fight are a handful of nominees Reid has been pushing to confirm. On Thursday, he set up procedural votes on a slate of nominees, but Republicans are poised to block Richard Cordray to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, as well as nominees for the National Labor Relations Board. These nominees are at the center of an ongoing legal struggle over the legality of Obama’s use of recess appointment power to place them at the agencies.

If Republicans don’t drop objections to those four nominees, Reid said he’s “going to do what I need to do.”

The fight, at the end of the day, may come down to vote counting.

Sources say Reid appears to have the 51 votes needed to change the rules. The only Democratic senator to speak up against the move at the Thursday lunch was Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, who — along with Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas — is expected to vote against the nuclear option. Democratic sources said Reid has won over one wavering Old Bull, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). But two other Democrats, Jack Reed of Rhode Island and Max Baucus of Montana, are still undecided.

Still, senators in both parties were nervous about proceeding to the nuclear option given that leaders in both parties, including Reid, have studiously avoided it for years. Now that Reid appears poised to go that route, senators said it would set a new precedent that future parties would undoubtedly exploit.

“I understand the fear of going there,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), “but the fear of not doing something at this point basically permanently keeps this a pretty dysfunctional body.”

“It will be the end of the Senate,” warned Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.).

On the usually decorous Senate floor, Reid’s stepped-up threat ignited an unusually personal and nasty exchange, underscoring the major implications of the debate.

“If we don’t pull back from the brink here, my friend, the majority leader, is going to be remembered as the worst leader of the Senate — ever,” fumed McConnell. “The leader of the Senate who fundamentally changed the body. It makes me sad. All of my members are angry. I’m more sad about it.”

“He tends to not focus on what he has done to the Senate,” Reid said in response to McConnell. “I guess he follows, I hope not, the demagogue theory that the more you keep saying something that is false, people start believing it.”

There is still a possibility that cooler heads will prevail. On Monday evening in the Old Senate Chamber, Democratic and Republican senators will hold a rare joint meeting to discuss the implications of the nuclear option. Undoubtedly, there will be grave warnings that invoking the nuclear option places the body on a slippery slope, changing the Senate from a chamber designed to protect the minority to one that will be run like the majority-rules House.

But it could turn into a partisan food fight and accelerate the battle on the floor next week. And it may not change any minds at all.

“I think it is a legitimate concern about the possible damage to the institution that made Leader Reid hesitate to change the rules at the beginning of the Congress,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.). “I’ve only been a senator three years, but the number of filibusters since I’ve gotten here, the number of hours wasted as an empty chamber while we burn through cloture votes, is profoundly disconcerting. And we have no guarantee that a Republican majority won’t make the same change.”

Part of what is driving Reid is the fact that he leads an increasingly junior caucus in which a majority of his 54 members have never served a day in the minority.

Yet while the effort is being driven largely by senators from the 2006 and 2008 classes, it is also backed by some veterans, like Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa.), who has long called for a dismantling of the filibuster.

While Harkin said it “bothers” him that using the nuclear option could lead to further rules changes on executive and judicial nominees as well as legislation, he’s over it.

“When, not if, but when the Republicans take charge of the Senate again and they have a Republican president, they will change those rules. Guarantee it,” Harkin said.

Alexander, a longtime institutionalist, agrees, saying now it would be far harder to tell future Republican majority leaders to forgo eliminating the filibuster if Reid acts next week. Alexander claimed it would allow future Republican-led Senates to easily approve a laundry list of GOP dreams: national right-to-work laws, finishing the Keystone XL pipeline, repealing Obamacare and altering Dodd-Frank financial rules.

“We’ll take our case to the people, we’ll argue for a new majority and then Republicans will be in a position to do whatever Republicans with 51 votes want to do,” Alexander said. “The more we think about it, the more attractive it becomes.”