Cmon Democrats, use the "Nuclear Option"
Why Democrats Should End Nomination Filibusters
Thursday afternoon, Republicans filibustered two of President Obama’s nominees: one to the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the other to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, one of the most important courts in the country.
Representative Mel Watt, a Democrat from North Carolina and U.S. President Barack Obama's nominee as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), waits to start a Senate Banking Committee nominations hearing in Washington, on June 27, 2013. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty)
An ordinary observer might look at this and assume there was a problem with the nominees. Were they too extreme? Not qualified? Unprepared for the tasks ahead of them? In this case, not at all. Instead, it’s just another chapter in the GOP’s long effort to gum up the works and disrupt the White House through abuse of the filibuster, an otherwise extraordinary measure that has become a routine part of governance in the age of GOP extremism.
North Carolina Representative Mel Watt—President Obama’s nominee to the FHFA—is a long-time member of Congress with twenty years on the House Financial Services Committee. It’s fair to disagree with his priorities as a lawmaker and potential regulator, but there’s no question he’s qualified for the position. To wit, this week, a large coalition of civil rights groups endorsed Watt, praising him for his “long history of standing up for working families, promoting safe and affordable housing, speaking out against predatory lending, and advocating for keeping homeowners in their homes.”
Republicans don’t have a specific complaint with Watt, and haven’t questioned his ability to do the job. Their only issue, it seems, is that Watt is the Democratic nominee of a Democratic president. Indeed, Republicans would prefer that Obama stuck with the acting FHFA director, Edward DeMarco, who entered the agency as an appointee of George W. Bush. “We’ve spent so much time at the White House prior to them naming a nominee asking them to please not appoint a politician, please appoint a technocrat,” said Tennessee Republican Bob Corker in an interview with Bloomberg. “To have a politician in that position, to me is inappropriate.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/10/31/why-democrats-should-end-nomination-filibusters.html
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