Nuclear Option During The Obama Presidency
In 2011, with a Democratic majority in the Senate (but not a supermajority), Senators Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Tom Udall (D-N.M.) proposed "a sweeping filibuster reform package" to be implemented via the constitutional option but Majority Leader Harry Reid dissuaded them from pushing it forward. In October 2011, however, Reid triggered the nuclear option to make a more modest change in Senate precedents. In a 51-48 vote, the Senate prohibited any motion to waive the rules after a filibuster is defeated.
The nuclear option was raised again following the congressional elections of 2012. The Hill reported that Democrats will "likely" use the nuclear option in January 2013 to effect filibuster reform, although as of mid-November supporters of filibuster reform did not even have the support of 51 Senators, according to Senator Tom Udall (D-N.M.), a leading proponent of the nuclear option.
Read more about this topic: Nuclear Option
Famous quotes containing the words nuclear, option and/or presidency:
“You can’t be a Real Country unless you have A BEER and an airline—it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a BEER.”
—Frank Zappa (1940–1993)
“You don’t merely give over your creativity to making a film—you give over your life! In theatre, by contrast, you live these two rather strange lives simultaneously; you have no option but to confront the mould on last night’s washing-up.”
—Daniel Day Lewis (b. 1957)
“... how often the Presidency has simply meant that a man shall be abused, distrusted, and worked to death while he is filling the great office, and that he should drop into unmerited oblivion when he has left the White House ...”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)