Senate nominee-deal averts filibuster curb
WASHINGTON — The Senate stepped away from the brink of a meltdown Tuesday, confirming one of President Barack Obama’s long-stalled nominees, agreeing to quick action on others and finessing a Democratic threat to overturn historic rules that protect minority-party rights.
“Nobody wants to come to Armageddon here,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat whose talks with Arizona Republican John McCain were critical in making a deal.
McCain, a veteran of uncounted legislative struggles, said forging the deal was “probably the hardest thing I’ve been involved in.”
The White House reaped the first fruits of the agreement within hours when Richard Cordray’s nomination to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was approved 66-34. He was first nominated in July 2011 and has been in office by virtue of a recess appointment that bypassed the Senate.
In a written statement,
Obama said he was pleased by the developments and that he hoped Congress would “build on this spirit of cooperation” to pass immigration legislation and rein in interest rates on student loans, among other measures.
As part of Tuesday’s agreement, both parties preserved their rights to resume combat over nominations in the future, Republicans by delaying votes and Democrats by threatening once again to change the rules governing such delays.
Still, officials in both parties said they hoped the deal would signal a new, less acrimonious time for the Senate, with critical decisions ahead on spending, the government’s borrowing authority, student-loan interest rates and more.
Under the agreement, several of seven stalled nominees are to win confirmation later in the week, including Labor Secretary-designate Tom Perez; Gina McCarthy, named to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, and Fred Hochberg to head of the Export-Import Bank.
Even before the agreement was ratified by the rank and file, Cordray’s long-stalled nomination to head the consumer protection agency advanced toward approval on a test vote of 71-29, far more than the 60 required. That began full-Senate debate on the nomination that was expected to last for up to eight hours before a final vote in which Cordray would need only 51 supporters for approval.
Two nominees to the National Labor Relations Board, Richard Griffin and Sharon Clark, are to be replaced by new selections, submitted quickly by Obama and steered toward speedy consideration by Senate Republicans.
Obama installed Griffin and Clark in their posts by recess appointments in 2011, bypassing the Senate but triggering a legal challenge. An appeals court recently said the two appointments were invalid, and the Supreme Court has agreed to review the case.
In their places, Obama nominated Nancy Schiffer, a former top lawyer for the AFL-CIO, and Kent Hirozaunfolded wa, counsel to labor board Chairman Mark Pearce. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said their appointments would be reviewed and voted on in committee next week and then go before the Senate for confirmation July 25.
McCain said the Senate would vote on their nominations by Aug. 1. Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee chairman, and the panel’s top Republican, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, agreed to expedite confirmation hearings to meet that deadline, McCain said.
Pearce, awaiting confirmation to a new term, is the seventh appointee at issue. His pick is relatively uncontentious, and he is expected to be approved along with the replacements for Griffin and Clark, if not before.
The labor board appointments, if confirmed as expected, would prevent the virtual shutdown of the agency because of a lack of confirmed board members to rule on collective-bargaining disputes between unions and companies.
“I think we get what we want, they get what they want. Not a bad deal,” said Reid.
“Crisis averted,” said the Republican leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
Scarcely 24 hours earlier, Reid had insisted that if Republicans didn’t stop blocking confirmation of all seven, he would trigger a change in the Senate’s procedures to strip them of their ability to delay. At the core of the dispute is the minority party’s power to stall or block a yes-or-no vote on nearly anything, from legislation to judicial appointments to relatively routine nominations for administration positions.
While a simple majority vote is required to confirm presidential appointees, it takes 60 votes to end the delaying tactic known as a filibuster and proceed to a yes-or-no vote. Democrats control 54 of 100 Senate seats.
Reid’s threat to remove the right to filibuster as it applied to nominations to administration positions was invariably described as the “nuclear option” for its likely effect on an institution with minority rights woven into its fabric.
The same term was used in 2005, after Democrats then in the minority blocked 10 of President George W. Bush’s appellate court nominees and Republicans said they would push through a rule change to prohibit the use of filibusters on judicial nominations. McCain helped defuse that fight as well.
Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said Tuesday’s agreement was “a new start” for the Senate. “I don’t know how I could be happier.”
As part of the deal, Republicans agreed to step aside and permit confirmation of several Obama nominees, some of whom they had long stalled. Cordray was first appointed in July 2011, but a vote was held up by GOP lawmakers who sought to use his confirmation as leverage to make changes in the legislation that created his agency.
McCarthy was named to her post in March, and Republicans dragged their feet, demanding she answer hundreds of questions about the EPA. At one point, they boycotted a committee meeting called to approve her appointment.
Perez, also nominated in March, is a senior Justice Department official, and he was accused by Republicans of making decisions guided by leftist ideology rather than the pursuit of justice.
As described by officials, the deal is similar to a proposal McConnell broached in remarks on the Senate floor last week during an unusually personal exchange with Reid.
At the time, the Kentucky Republican also said he had told Obama last January to drop his hopes of confirmation for Griffin and Clark and instead name two replacements for quick consideration. He relayed the same message again last month to Vice President Joe Biden, a former senator with whom he has a long relationship.
Tuesday’s developments the morning after a private meeting of nearly all 100 senators, many of them eager to avoid a rules change that could poison relations between the two parties in an era of chronic Senate gridlock. About three dozen lawmakers spoke in the course of a session that lasted more than three hours, and while few details have emerged, several participants said later that it had been a productive meeting.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she had urged others to “look ahead and think about the time when we would have a Republican president with Republican arkansasonline.com/ obamasecondterm Senate and there could be someone appointed who was completely unacceptable to my Democratic colleagues and was nominated to run their favorite program.” She said she asked if they “really want to give away their right to filibuster that individual.”
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said the sense of history hung over the meeting, which was held in the Old Senate Chamber, where lawmakers had debated slavery and other great national issues for much of the 19th century.
“Sen. McCain talked about Webster, Jefferson and Madison. We knew that we were on sacred political ground,” he said.
McCain said that with McConnell’s knowledge, he had been involved in talks for several days in search of a compromise, speaking with Biden, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and numerous senators.
“At least 10 times it came together, and then fell apart because there’s always some new wrinkle,” he said. Information for this article was contributed by David Espo, Alan Fram, Charles Babington, Donna Cassata, Josh Lederman and Sam Hananel of The Associated Press; by Lisa Lerer, Kathleen Hunter, Laura Litvan, Cheyenne Hopkins, David Lerman, James Rowley, Megan O’Neil, Roger Runningen and Laurie Asseo of Bloomberg News; and by Jonathan Weisman of The
New York Times.