WaPo: Amid acrimony, Senate moves toward historic vote to change its rules
“I refuse to unilaterally surrender my right to respond to this breach of faith,” Reid said of McConnell. “I wait, I wait, but I’m not going to wait another month, another few weeks, another year for Congress to take action on the things that we have been doing for 200 and almost 40 years.”
Reid said he planned to use a party-line vote to change the Senate’s rules so that nominees can be confirmed by a simple majority, thereby doing an end run around a Republican blockade of nominees to key boards that oversee Wall Street and labor relations.
The method for changing the rules would require a ruling from the presiding officer, likely to be Vice President Biden, declaring filibusters on such Cabinet or agency nominations invalid, followed by a vote requiring 51 votes to uphold the ruling.
After two previous threats to change rules on party-line votes — a move that critics have dubbed the “nuclear option” — Reid declared that this time he would do so. He set a key test vote beginning Tuesday with the nomination of the head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/amid-acrimony-senate-moves-toward-historic-vote-to-change-its-rules/2013/07/11/e3e06e2c-ea45-11e2-a301-ea5a8116d211_story.html
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