November 22, 2013

Yesterday, the U.S. Senate voted 52-to-48 to change Senate rules to eliminate filibusters for most presidential appointments. Orchestrated by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nevada), the vote was primarily along party lines, with all Republicans voting against the change. The rule change allows most nominees for executive appointments and federal judgeships to be confirmed by a simple majority, rather than the 60-vote supermajority that has been required to overturn filibusters for more than two centuries. The change does not apply to Supreme Court nominations.

Political experts noted that the move severely curtails the political power of the Senate’s Republican minority and will undoubtedly escalate Washington’s already intense partisan warfare. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R. Kentucky) accused Democrats of a power grab and warned that they will regret this move. “We’re not interested in having a gun put to our head any longer,” stated McConnell. “You may regret this a lot sooner than you think,” he added, referring to the possibility that Republicans may take control of the Senate in the 2014 off-year elections.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (U.S. Senate)

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (U.S. Senate)

Majority Leader Reid triggered the so-call “nuclear option” after Republicans filibustered many of President Barack Obama’s nominees, including three appointments to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The Republican justified their filibusters with the assertion that the appellate court simply did not need more judges, regardless of the vacancies.

The D.C. Appellate Court is responsible for the review of most legal challenges to the conduct of the federal government. These challenges generally deal with federal regulations concerning finance, food and drugs, the environment, health care, immigration, national security, and other politically contentious areas. Democrats and many independent political experts charged that the Republicans were filibustering Obama’s appellate court nominees because they did not want the vacancies filled with people whom they deemed liberal. The court appointments are for life.

Additional World Book article:

• Congress of the United States 2012 (a Back in Time article)

October 17, 2013

Some 800,000 federal employees went back to work this morning after a 16-day shutdown of the United States government. The political stand-off between the Republican majority in the House of Representatives and Senate Democrats and President Barack Obama ended just minutes before a midnight deadline after which the government’s ability to borrow money by selling bonds would have expired.

A bill brokered by Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D., Nevada) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Kentucky) finances the operations of government until Jan. 15, 2014, and raises the nation’s debt limit through the middle of February. The Senate passed the measure last night by an 81-to-18 vote. The House followed suit, passing the bill by a vote of 285-to-144. Eighty-seven House Republicans broke ranks to join a united Democratic caucus in approving the measure.

An attempt to defund the Affordable Care Act by hardline conservatives in the House of Representatives collapsed on October 16, when both houses of Congress passed legislation financing the federal government and raising the debt limit.  (© Brooks Kraft, Corbis)

Passage of the measure ended a stalemate led by hardline conservatives, generally members of the House Tea Party caucus. The caucus pushed their Republican leaders to use the double threat of a shutdown and a default on the national debt to defund the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as “Obamacare.”

Political experts generally agree that pushing the federal government to the edge of a fiscal meltdown for political gain was a major misstep by Congressional Republicans. A Washington Post-ABC public opinion poll taken earlier this week found that 74 percent of Americans disapproved of the way Republicans in Congress were handling the negotiations. A Pew poll taken yesterday found that public approval of the Tea Party was in free fall. Only 20 percent of polled Republicans now support the Tea Party movement. The Wall Street credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s announced yesterday that the shutdown had drained at least $24 billion out of the already fragile U.S. economy.  Conservative radio pundit Rush Limbaugh described the Republican shutdown and subsequent surrender as “One of the greatest political disasters I’ve ever seen.”

Additional World Book articles:

• National budget
• Tempest in a Tea Party (a special report)

September 30, 2013
A shutdown of the U.S. federal government looms, as Democratic and Republican lawmakers remain deadlocked over stopgap legislation to fund government operations. Without passage of a finance bill by both houses of Congress, the government will be forced to close all nonessential federal services at midnight on October 1.

Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner (above), leads a Republican Party intent upon tying the U.S. budget bill to delaying or denying funding to the Affordable Healthcare Act, passed in 2010. Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (above left) has vowed that the Senate will not vote for the House's version of the finance bill (United States House of Representatives).

(U.S. Senate)

The key point of contention in the political stalemate is the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s landmark health care legislation. A number of Republicans in the House of Representatives—in particular the Tea Party caucus—demand that the law be repealed or stripped of funding as a condition for keeping the government running. The House passed its latest version of a stopgap funding measure on September 28. The bill included a year-long delay in the implementation of what has come to be called “Obamacare.” It also included a measure that would permanently eliminate a medical-device tax that was designed to partially fund the new health care system. Legal experts point out that eliminating the tax would essentially cripple the act. Senate Majority leader Harry Reid has vowed that his Democrat-led chamber will reject the House bill, and in fact, the Senate failed to go into session on September 29 despite the political crisis.

A government shutdown would place more than 700,000 federal employees on unpaid leave, with no guarantee of receiving back pay once the deadlock is over; Social Security, federal pension, and veterans’ benefit checks would be delayed; Medicare and Medicaid payments would be disrupted; and many government facilities, including immigration services  and passport and visa offices, would be shut down; the national parks and Smithsonian museums would also close.

President Obama emphasized today that the simple solution to the standoff is for House Republicans to pass the budget that was passed by the Senate on September 27. Of course, the Senate legislation does not gut the Affordable Care Act. Political experts note that the Senate bill, if brought to the House floor by Speaker John Boehner, would almost certainly pass, largely with Democratic votes. However, they suggest that if Boehner were to bring the Senate bill to a vote in defiance of the Tea Party caucus his action would likely cost him his position as speaker of the House.

Major portions of the Affordable Care Act, which a Democrat-controlled Congress passed in 2010, are due to go into effect tomorrow. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the act was constitutional in 2012.

Additional World Book articles:

• Congress of the United States 2010 (a Back in Time article)
• Health Care Reform–What’s in it for You? (a special report)
• Medicaid in Distress (a special report)
• Tempest in a Tea Party (a special report)