Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is leading a filibuster against Judge Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court arguing that recent high court nominees have all reached a 60-vote threshold, so Gorsuch should too.
At a 2013 press conference, however, Schumer was singing a different tune – saying that Democrats prefer up-or-down votes “no matter who’s in power.”
“We much prefer the risk of up-or-down votes in majority rule, then the risk of continued total obstruction,” he said. “That is the bottom line, no matter who’s in power,” he said at a press conference.
Then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., was leading the press conference convened to discuss his decision to “go nuclear” and change Senate rules to require only 51-vote majorities, instead of a 60-vote threshold, for presidential nominations except those for the Supreme Court.
“For too long Washington has been in gridlock, gridlock, gridlock. The American people are sick of it. We’re sick of it,” Reid said at the same press conference, acknowledging that there’s a lot of blame to go around to both sides.
But then he pivoted to blame Republicans for taking obstruction to new levels.
“The obstruction we’ve seen by Republicans against President Obama has reached new heights never dreamed of,” he said.
The first 140 years of the country, Reid said, there were no filibusters because “the founding fathers were very clear in what they thought there should be supermajorities [for] — impeachments, and of course, on treaties.”
The Washington Free Beacon first reported on Schumer’s 2013 statement contradicting his current stance.
Schumer and other Democrats now are doing everything they can to block Gorsuch’s confirmation, insisting he overcome a 60-vote threshold.
The Democratic leader continued his argument Wednesday even after Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler earlier this year gave him “two Pinocchios” and deemed their language “slippery” and “misleading.”
