Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Nobody budges as Senate kicks off Gorsuch debate
WASHINGTON — The Senate began formally debating Tuesday the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to serve on the Supreme Court with no sign that Democrats and Republicans are trying to avoid changing the rules of the chamber to ensure his confirmation.
Democrats have the votes they need to block a procedural vote and compel President Donald Trump and Senate Republicans either to withdraw Gorsuch’s nomination or to change the chamber’s rules to eliminate the 60-vote requirement.
For weeks, Republicans have warned that they will change the procedures if Democrats block Gorsuch. GOP leaders are vowing to confirm the 49-year old federal appeals court judge by Friday.
With the opposition holding firm, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., claimed the votes to bust a Democratic filibuster.
Forty-four Democrats intend to vote against proceeding to final confirmation on Gorsuch, which would be enough to block him under the Senate’s filibuster rules that require 60 votes to proceed.
In a speech on the Senate floor, McConnell faulted Democrats.
“They seem determined to head into the abyss,” the Kentucky Republican said. “They need to reconsider.”
“It appears as if cloture will not be invoked, but we’ll find out on Thursday,” McConnell later told reporters, referring to an expected Democratic blockade of the federal appeals court judge. “But either way, we’ll be moving toward confirming Judge Gorsuch.”
McConnell intends to act unilaterally with the rest of his 52-member GOP conference and change the rules to eliminate the 60-vote threshold and require just a simple majority on Gorsuch and all future Supreme Court nominees. Asked if he has the votes to do that, given misgivings voiced by many Republicans, McConnell answered simply, “Yes.”
But Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said that an impasse could still be avoided if Trump and Senate Republicans negotiated with Democrats to select a new nominee.
“Sen. McConnell would have the world believe that his hands are tied, that the only option after Judge Gorsuch doesn’t earn 60 votes is to break the rules, to change the rules,” Schumer said. “That could not be further from the truth.
“There are mainstream Republican nominees who can earn adequate Democratic support,” he said. He declined to suggest new potential nominees.
The rules change is known on Capitol Hill as the “nuclear option” because of the potential repercussions for the Senate and the court.
The nuclear option in Senate procedure dates from 2013, when Democrats, angered by Republican opposition to then-President Barack Obama’s nominees voted to end filibusters of executive branch and lower-court nominees. Republicans warned then that there might one day be retribution.
“There’s a reason they call it the nuclear option, and that is that there’s fallout. And this fallout will be dangerously and perhaps disastrously radioactive for the Senate in years to come,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.
LOOKING FOR A MIDDLE
In a sign that at least some senators still want to avoid the showdown, Sen. Christopher Coons, D-Del., said that even though he plans to vote against Gorsuch and support the Democratic filibuster, he is willing to work on an agreement that would stave off changes to how the Senate confirms Supreme Court justices.
“There are Democrats and Republicans who I hope will be talking this week, in the next two days, to see if we could find some path forward where we preserve the filibuster,” Coons said in a CNN interview.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, said that he had been discussing a potential compromise with Democrats as recently as Monday, but admitted “I haven’t made a real push” to reach an agreement.
Plans for a Democratic filibuster “are stupid. I think it’s a big mistake,” he added.
Signaling that any hopes of a compromise are likely dead, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who was able to successfully broker past disputes on judicial nominees thanks to his close relationship with several Democrats, said that this time he is done trying.
Talks between Democrats and Republicans in the past few days “didn’t go anywhere,” he told reporters, but declined to specify areas of disagreement.
McCain was part of a 2005 agreement between 14 senators of both parties to preserve the filibuster and allow the confirmation of several of former president George W. Bush’s federal court nominees.
But negotiations aren’t possible in today’s Senate “because there’s much more partisanship, there’s much more outside influence on both ends of the spectrum, and you don’t have the kind of comity that you had in those times,” McCain said. “They were tough partisan times, but when it came crunch time, we sat down together.”
With all Republicans expected to vote to confirm Gorsuch, just a few Democratic holdouts remain. Three Democrats — Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, and Joe Manchin III of West Virginia — say they plan to support Gorsuch. Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., who represents Gorsuch’s home state, says he won’t support the filibuster but has yet to signal whether he would vote to confirm Gorsuch. Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, is one of the few holdouts, and said Tuesday that he isn’t ready yet to announce a decision.
Gorsuch was nominated by Trump on Jan. 31 and spent weeks privately meeting with senators and preparing for his confirmation hearings. He was questioned by the Judiciary Committee last month for almost 20 hours over three days, answering nearly 1,200 questions and later sending about 70 pages of answers to written follow-up questions, according to a team of White House officials assisting with his nomination.
As of Friday, Gorsuch had met with 78 senators — all but some of the most conservative and liberal lawmakers, whose votes are likely to fall along party lines. But three first-term Democratic senators — Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto, Illinois’ Tammy Duckworth and California’s Kamala Harris — complained that they were unable to get a face-to-face meeting with the nominee or were not offered the opportunity.
“There’s a reason they call it the nuclear option, and that is that there’s fallout. And this fallout will be dangerously and perhaps disastrously radioactive for the Senate in years to come.”
— Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.