http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/07/11/harry-reid-escalates-nuclear-threat-in-a-big-way/An important moment on the Senate floor just now: Harry Reid said he would be filing cloture today on a whole bunch of executive nominations, and challenged Republicans to act on them — a major escalation of the threat to change the Senate rules by simple majority, i.e, the “nuclear option.”
“We’re going to file cloture on a bunch of nominations, and those votes will occur next week when we schedule them,” Reid said, adding later that if no movement occurred on them, “we know what’s going to happen.”
According to a senior Senate Democratic aide, this means that Reid will file cloture on the following nominations today: Richard Cordray as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; Gina McCarthy as head of the Environmental Protection Agency; Obama’s picks to the National Labor Relations Board; and possibly Thomas Perez as Labor Secretary.
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In a sense, what this move does is that it shifts the debate over rules reform back onto Republicans. While it remains unclear whether Reid has the support of 51 Dems to change the rules, this is in effect a message to Democrats that they can base their decision on whether to go nuclear on Republican conduct, on how Republicans respond to the Cordray, NLRB, EPA, and Labor Secretary picks. Even if there remains resistance among Dems to going nuclear, this will give them a framework within which to make the final decision.
In other words, Reid’s move today is as much about giving Dems a way to take the nuclear plunge, if necessary, as it is about drawing a very clear marker on what Republicans must do in order to avoid nuclear Armageddon.
