Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he would file a motion to invoke cloture on Tuesday and limit debate on Judge Neil Gorsuch’s Supreme Court nomination, citing Democrats’ filibuster threat.
McConnell said “it’s not too late” for Democrats to drop the filibuster threat, and said the “future of the Senate will hang on their choice.”
“Later today, due to the threat of an unprecedented partisan filibuster, I’ll file cloture on the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to be an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court,” McConnell said on the floor of the Senate. “It should be unsettling to everyone that our colleagues across the aisle have brought the Senate to this new low.”
The Republican leader’s actions set the table for a fight over the filibuster this week, when Democrats will resist the motion to limit debate and appear to have the votes necessary to block cloture. Senate Republicans have signaled a willingness to invoke the “nuclear option” at that point, meaning they would lower the vote threshold necessary to confirm Gorsuch to 51.
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A partisan filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee has never succeeded. But Democrats point to Republicans’ blockade of President Obama’s high court pick, Judge Merrick Garland, as equivalent to such a filibuster.
“I cannot believe [McConnell] can stand here on the floor of the U.S. Senate and with a straight face say that Democrats are launching the first partisan filibuster of the Supreme Court nominee,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Tuesday. “What the majority leader did to Merrick Garland by denying him even a hearing and a vote is even worse than a filibuster. For him to accuse Democrats of the first partisan filibuster on the Supreme Court belies the facts, belies the history, belies the basic truth.”
Gorsuch sailed through the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday along a purely partisan vote, and Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley said Monday that the full Senate would confirm Gorsuch by the end of the week.
