Harry Reid to Dems: Kill the Filibuster to Tackle the Climate Crisis

[babylonsister]

Harry Reid to Dems: Kill the Filibuster to Tackle the Climate Crisis
The former majority leader has some thoughts about what his party should do should it return to power.
Sam Stein
Politics Editor
Updated 08.08.19 7:57AM ET / Published 08.08.19 4:59AM ET


LAS VEGAS, NEVADA -- As the Democratic Party debates what to prioritize should it take power following the 2020 elections, former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) offered his fellow members a stern directive and an ambitious proposal.

Tackle climate change legislation first, Reid said. And if it requires eliminating the filibuster to do it... well, so be it.

“The answer is yes,” Reid said, when asked if he would scrap the Senate rule requiring 60 votes for legislation if it allowed the party to pass a bill addressing the climate crisis. “[T]he No. 1 priority is climate change. There’s nothing that affects my children, grandchildren, and their children, right now, more than climate.”

Reid’s admonition represents the most notable case of a party elder arguing that global warming needs to be the Democrats’ No. 1 agenda item. But it is also premised on three decidedly significant—and to varying degrees, unlikely—developments: that Democrats retake the White House, that they retake the Senate, and that 50 of those Senators decide they are comfortable changing the rules of their chamber to get rid of the filibuster.

It’s happened before, though with different stakes. In 2013, Reid and his fellow Senate Democrats scrapped the 60-vote threshold for most judicial appointments, saying that Republican opposition to Barack Obama’s nominees had left them with no other choice. In 2017, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), followed suit by scrapping the 60-vote threshold for Supreme Court nominees and cabinet officials, saying that Reid had laid the procedural and intellectual foundation for them to do so.

McConnell has resisted calls—including from President Donald Trump—to go even further and end the filibuster for actual legislation. But Reid said that the day will come for that as well.

“It is not a question of if,” he told The Daily Beast in an interview from his office at the University of Las Vegas. “It is a question of when we get rid of the filibuster. It’s gone. It’s gone.”

more...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/harry-reid-to-dems-kill-the-filibuster-to-tackle-the-climate-crisis?ref=home

[FBaggins]

1. We may not have learned our lesson

Reid's killing of the filibuster for judges has done much more harm than good so far.

I also disagree that it's inevitable. It was certainly inevitable that it was dead for SCOTUS appointees once he killed it for other judges... but the "nuclear option" relies on a process that shouldn't work for legislation. That is... the majority argues that the rule never really applied to X... and since the majority is the one that controls the ruling on whether or not that's true... they have the power to make it happen.

But how does one argue that the filibuster rule never really applied to legislation?

Either way... I think it's a bad idea.