http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/17/opinion/the-senate-clings-to-the-filibuster.html?_r=0

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 8:11 AM
Subject: re: The Senate Clings to the Filibuster
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   We have long known that Harry Reid boxed in his earlier days. Only now does he evince a flair for bridge as well.  For years, the senate has been paralyzed by the mere threat of a Republican filibuster. Now, Harry has learned to get his way by the mere threat of filibuster reform. It is a tool that he should use again and again. This time, we win the confirmation of Richard Cordray. Next time, maybe we'll bring the Federal bench up to fighting strength. And if at last the Republicans balk, he should carry out the threat. Then we'll get filibuster reform. And that will be a win, too.

Barry Haskell Levine

EDITORIAL

The Senate Clings to the Filibuster

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Published: July 16, 2013 CommentER

For Richard Cordray, who has waited for two years to be permanently appointed as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the wait is over. He was confirmed on Tuesday,after a deal was reached to avoid a ban on filibusters on presidential nominations. Senate Republicans agreed to allow the up-or-down vote on his nomination, as well as on six other appointments.

That’s a great relief to the bureau, which can now operate without a political sword over its head, and to the National Labor Relations Board and the Export-Import Bank, which were also promised a working quorum of members as part of the deal. The threat made by the majority leader, Harry Reid, to change the Senate’s filibuster rules ended the current crisis by persuading Senator John McCain and other mainstream Republicans to give in and allow President Obama votes on his nominations. (Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, showed how little he deserves that title by voting to continue a filibuster on Mr. Cordray and staying out of the deal, leaving the real leadership to more sensible members of his caucus.)

But there is always another crisis to come. That’s why it’s regrettable that Mr. Reid and the Democrats didn’t vote to change the rules for this Senate and for a future one controlled by Republicans. They should have stood up for the principle that simple-majority votes should determine confirmation of executive appointments, not a 60-vote threshold that gives minority parties a veto over a president’s team and that was unintended by the Constitution.

The deal will allow simple-majority confirmation votes for Gina McCarthy and Thomas Perez to lead the Environmental Protection Agency and the Labor Department, respectively. It will allow a vote for Fred Hochberg to be confirmed again as president of the Export-Import Bank. Mark Pearce, the chairman of the labor-relations board, would also get a reappointment vote.

If Mr. Obama agrees to pull two other nominees to the board — Richard Griffin and Sharon Block — whom Republicans have been blocking since 2011, he will be guaranteed votes on replacements of his choice. That will keep the labor board operating for years, but it’s an unfortunate bit of blackmail that Republicans needed for backing down on everything else. The two nominees were eminently qualified for their jobs, but have been caught up in a lawsuit over the question of whether their recess appointments by Mr. Obama are constitutional. Of course, if they hadn’t been filibustered in 2011, the lawsuit would never have come about.

Will this agreement hold for the next round of appointments? Democrats say that is implicit in their victory and that Republicans will no longer be able to summon 41 votes to block a nominee. But that sounds overconfident. Within a few weeks, Mr. Obama will nominate someone to lead the Homeland Security Department and may have a chance to name a new chairman of the Federal Reserve. If Democrats are forced, once again, to threaten a change in the rules to get votes for those nominations, they may wish they had established a more durable principle this week by ending the nominations filibuster for good
.