Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said on Sunday he still wants to move forward with his plan to trigger the “nuclear option,” which would allow the Senate to approve executive branch nominees with 51 votes instead of the currently required 67 votes.
Reid says this move is a necessary reaction to Republicans consistently filibustering Obama’s nominations.
“The changes we’re making are very, very minimal. What we’re doing is saying: ‘Look American people, shouldn’t President Obama have somebody working for him that he wants?’” Politico quoted Reid saying on ‘Meet The Press.’ “If you want to look at nominations, you know what the Founding Fathers said: ‘Simple majority.’ That’s what we need to do.”
House Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) did a separate interview on ‘Meet The Press’ Sunday and refuted Reid’s claim that the GOP was blocking the president’s nominations.
“What is the problem here? The president has had 1,540 of his nominations confirmed, only four defeated. He’s not lost a single member of the cabinet. He’s getting them faster than President Bush was at the same time in his second term,” McConnell said. “The majority leader needs to bring these nominees up. Most of them are going to be confirmed.”
But nominees to head up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the National Labor Relations Board, for instance, have yet to be approved. The National Labor Relations Board will not be able to operate after August without Senate action because the current chair’s term expires then, according to Politico.
