Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called on Republicans to use one of “many alternatives” other than the so-called nuclear option when the Senate votes on Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch later this week.
Schumer, D-N.Y., said “it has become clear” Democrats will fail to provide the eight votes needed to block a filibuster on Gorsuch when the Senate considers his nomination on Thursday.
Instead of changing the Senate procedure from 60 to 51 votes to confirm Gorsuch, as Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is likely to do, Schumer said Republicans, President Trump and Democrats should meet to pick a new nominee that can win 60 votes.
“He certainly has the choice to do the right and courageous thing,” Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor Monday, shortly after the Judiciary Committee voted to approve Gorsuch.
Schumer suggested it was only fair for the GOP to lose out on Gorsuch because the Senate Republican majority last year refused to take up Judge Merrick Garland, who was President Obama’s Supreme Court pick to replace the late Antonin Scalia.
“We can go back and forth and blame each other but the recent history of the vacancy caused by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death, we both lost,” Schumer said.
McConnell, speaking shortly after Schumer, did not reveal how Republicans will respond to a likely filibuster by the Democrats when the Senate takes the procedural vote on Thursday, but he has pledged Gorsuch will be confirmed to the high court before the Senate leaves for a two-week recess either Friday or early Saturday.
McConnell called the opposition by Democrats to the “clearly qualified and widely respected” Gorsuch “a new low” in the Senate. He said Senate floor time this week would be dedicated entirely to the Gorsuch nomination.
McConnell said the Thursday cloture vote would constitute “the first successful partisan filibuster in the history of the Senate.”
