WHAT? House Conservatives Call on Senate to Change Filibuster Rules for DHS
So after less than two months into the new Republican controlled Senate, the “Nuclear Option” makes its first appearance.
Seriously, these people are delusional. The Democrats put up with Republican obstructionism for six years. Finally doing away with the filibuster only for presidential cabinet positions and some judges.
Thankfully, for now, many in the GOP disagree with doing away with the filibuster. But who knows how long that will last.
Hypocrisy alone can’t even begin to account for the dysfunction in the Republican party.
As House Republicans grapple with how they can force Senate Democrats to take up their version of a Department of Homeland Security funding bill, some conservatives are calling on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to turn toward the so-called nuclear option.
“Mitch McConnell can change the rules of the Senate,” Rep. Raúl R. Labrador said Thursday at a panel discussion with conservative lawmakers. “And this is important enough for Mitch McConnell to change the rules of the Senate.”
Senate Democrats used the nuclear option to change the rules in the last Congress for “low-level appointments,” Labrador noted. “We’re talking about a constitutional crisis,” he said.
Labrador was referring to President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration, which Republicans are attempting to block through the DHS funding bill.
The Idaho Republican is frustrated with GOP senators who insist the House should send them a clean funding measure because they can’t reach 60 votes on a procedural motion to take up the bill.
That advice is not sitting well with conservatives, nor with Speaker John A. Boehner and others in House GOP leadership.
Labrador wondered why Republicans would let a small bloc of Senate Democrats thwart their legislative propositions, and he said if that was the plan, there was no point to being in D.C.
“Why don’t they all just go home?” Labrador asked.
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