Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is firing back at Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., for saying Democrats will filibuster Judge Neil Gorsuch’s Supreme Court nomination, by saying Schumer is failing in his basic duty as a senator by taking that position.
“Let me tell you this … I like Schumer, he’s a good senator, and I’ve worked with him on some things,” he told the Washington Examiner. “But there’s something about [former Democratic Leader Harry] Reid and Schumer and maybe even some Republican leaders, that once you get to be a leader, it destroys you as a senator.”
“You’re judgment – it clouds your judgment,” Grassley said.
Grassley said this week that if Democrats can’t vote for a nominee with a stellar American Bar Association and squeaky-clean reputation, they can’t vote for anyone. He also said Schumer’s plan to filibuster “poisons the well” in the Senate for future cooperation on unrelated matters.
The growing fight over Gorsuch is raising the possibility that Republicans may have to change Senate rules in order to get Gorsuch confirmed. Senate Republicans leaders have repeatedly said that Gorsuch will be confirmed one way or another and Democrats appear ready and willing to push them to the breaking point of “going nuclear” and blowing up Senate filibuster rules.
Such a rule change would let Republicans approve Gorsuch and possibly other Supreme Court nominees with just a simple majority vote, instead of the 60 votes now required.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is an institutionalist and doesn’t want to change Senate rules for high court nominees, even though his Democratic predecessor, former Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., went “nuclear” in 2013 and eliminated the filibuster for all presidential nominees except those for the high court, what Republicans refer to as the “Reid rule.”
But McConnell has issued several warnings that he will do it what it takes to seat Gorsuch, including torching Senate rules. Three times since Trump nominated Gorsuch, McConnell vowed that this nominee would be confirmed. Vice President Mike Pence in March said the nominee would be confirmed “one way or the other.”
Grassley is holding out hope that cooler heads will prevail on the Democratic side, and eight Democrats in red states will join Republicans in a vote to end debate on Gorsuch, which takes 60 votes.
“The 80 members of the Senate that didn’t hear Gorsuch in these last two days [of hearings], when they start analyzing what a good job he did and how qualified he is, we’re going to get a few Democrat votes and there’s not going to be any filibuster,” Grassley said.
But he’s still incredibly angry that Democrats are requiring a 60-vote threshold when Republicans moved both of President Obama’s Supreme Court nominees, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor without forcing a cloture vote. Kagan was confirmed 61 to 31 with five Republicans voting yes, and Sotomayor was confirmed 68-31, with the help of nine Republicans.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., pushed back at Grassley, and reminded him that Grassley and McConnell blocked consideration of Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland for nearly a year.
“Senator Grassley said this after they blocked any vote on Merrick Garland?” he said, when asked about Grassley’s comment about Schumer’s cloudy judgment. “That’s an interesting concept, but not logical but an interesting concept.”
Democratic senators argue that Kagan and Sotomayor both were able to reach a 60-vote standard so Gorsuch should too.
“The 60-vote standard has been the standard – there’s nothing new about that…end of story,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., told the Washington Examiner.
The reason Grassley is lashing out at Schumer, Whitehouse argued, is because he’s worried that there’s not enough votes to confirm Gorsuch without changing Senate rules.
“They might not get to 60 – that’s why they’re starting to get anxious about it,” he said.
Republicans counter that their party, when considering Obama’s high court nominees, didn’t filibuster either because they accepted the results of the election, that Obama had won and had the right to appoint his choices to the Supreme Court.
“Democrats are not being honest here,” said one senior GOP leadership aide. “They are still not accepting that Trump won.”
Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, warned Democrats that forcing Republicans to follow the so-called “Reid rule” with their own, even though they’d rather not, will come back to haunt them when down the road when they want to block a particularly partisan GOP-appointed judge and have no power to do so.
“Eventually, Democrats are going to have to decide whether it’s in their political self-interest to block this highly qualified nominee,” Cornyn told reporters Thursday. “We will hold out hope we can get a least eight of them to vote for cloture.”
“But he’s going to get confirmed one way or another,” Cornyn added.
