BALTIMORE — Senate Republicans are contemplating a way to reduce the power of the filibuster, but said Thursday they’ll only make changes to the rules if a significant number of Democrats approve, and would only impose those changes in 2017.
Additionally, the GOP has no plans so far of changing the 60-vote threshold for confirming Supreme Court nominees, even though Democrats lowered the threshold to 51 votes for lower-court nominees.
Meeting with reporters at the annual GOP retreat, Republican leaders said they won’t rush into a rules change despite calls from House Republicans and some conservative Senate lawmakers to ditch the chamber’s current 60-vote threshold rule. Lowering that threshold would help clear many of the GOP bills that have passed the House but languished in the upper chamber, where Republicans control only 54 votes.
Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., who chairs the Senate Republican Policy Committee, told reporters the party would not be abandoning Senate protocol by allowing a simple majority to change the rules, a move known as the “nuclear option.” Republicans accused the Democrats of doing that in the last Congress.
Instead, he said Republicans would seek a Democratic buy-in with a 67-vote threshold and an enactment date of January 2017, when either party has a chance of being in the majority.
“We are at a point right now where more Republicans and Democrats in the Senate would say, we are not sure who is going to be in the majority in 2017,” Barrasso said. “Not knowing who would be in the majority, this would be the best time to have a bipartisan approach.”
Democrats control 46 votes, which means Republicans would need at least 21 Democrats to support a rules change.
Leaders are contemplating a plan to end the 60-vote threshold required to begin debate on legislation. The rule last year helped Democrats block every single appropriations bill from reaching the Senate floor.
A filibuster rules change has slowly become more popular in the Senate, which moves much slower than the House when it comes to debating and passing legislation.
House lawmakers, particularly conservatives, are calling on Senate GOP leaders to eliminate the 60-vote threshold for most legislation in order to pass a conservative agenda that would end up on President Obama’s desk, regardless of his veto threats.
House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., said more than half of all House-passed bills never came up in the Senate last year.
“Our members are very passionate about getting the bills we move in the House brought up in the Senate,” Scalise said.
In November of 2013, then-Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., used the nuclear option to change the Senate rules. Reid ordered the 60-vote threshold lowered to a simple majority for executive and judicial branch nominations, excluding nominations to the Supreme Court.
With Republicans in position to possibly win the White House, and Supreme Court vacancies looming, reporters asked Barrasso if the GOP was weighing whether to lower the vote threshold to 51 for high court nominations.
“That has not been discussed,” Barrasso said.
