It’s done! Senate Democrats have — at long last — voted to implement filibuster reform

After years of talk, fil­i­buster reform has final­ly become a reality.

Today, the Unit­ed States Sen­ate took a huge and momen­tous step towards becom­ing a more demo­c­ra­t­ic body. By a vote of fifty-two to forty-eight, sen­a­tors vot­ed to change Sen­ate rules to abol­ish fil­i­busters of exec­u­tive and judi­cial nom­i­na­tions, except Supreme Court nominations.

The move means that Repub­li­cans will no longer be able to pre­vent Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s nom­i­nees from receiv­ing a vote on the Sen­ate floor.

“It’s time to change the Sen­ate before this insti­tu­tion becomes obso­lete,” Reid declared before the vote, on the floor of the Sen­ate. Aware of what was about to hap­pen, near­ly every sen­a­tor was in the cham­ber, giv­ing Reid and his Repub­li­can coun­ter­part Mitch McConnell an unusu­al­ly large live audience.

“The Amer­i­can peo­ple believe Con­gress is bro­ken. The Amer­i­can peo­ple believe the Sen­ate is bro­ken. And I agree,” Reid added.

At the White House, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma took to the podi­um inside the James M. Brady Press Brief­ing Room to praise the vote, say­ing the time had come for reform.

“I’m a for­mer sen­a­tor. So is my Vice Pres­i­dent. We both val­ue any Sen­ate’s duty to advise and con­sent. It’s impor­tant, and we take that very seri­ous­ly. But a few now refuse to treat that duty of advise and con­sent with the respect that it deserves.  It’s no longer used in a respon­si­ble way to gov­ern. It’s rather used as a reck­less and relent­less tool to grind all busi­ness to a halt. And that’s not what our Founders intend­ed, and it’s cer­tain­ly not what our coun­try needs right now.”

“Pub­lic ser­vice is not a game,” the Pres­i­dent added. “It is a priv­i­lege. And the con­se­quences of action or inac­tion are very real.”

“The Amer­i­can peo­ple deserve bet­ter than politi­cians who run for elec­tion telling them how ter­ri­ble gov­ern­ment is, and then devot­ing their time in elect­ed office to try­ing to make gov­ern­ment not work as often as possible.”

Angry Repub­li­cans promised that Democ­rats would “rue the day” they decid­ed to take a stand in favor of mak­ing the Sen­ate oper­ate more democratically.

“You’ll regret this, and you may regret this a lot soon­er than you think,” fumed Mitch McConnell, who only a few years ago, in con­cert with Bill Frist, was on the verge of engi­neer­ing a vote on a sim­i­lar rules change. McConnell has pre­vi­ous­ly said if Democ­rats vot­ed to lim­it the fil­i­buster, his cau­cus would do away with it entire­ly if they regained the major­i­ty. Of course, fur­ther lim­it­ing the fil­i­buster would actu­al­ly allow major­i­ty rule to pre­vail more of the time, which would be an improvement.

Repub­li­cans are cor­rect that Democ­rats have used the fil­i­buster to block nom­i­nees before, most recent­ly George W. Bush’s. But Democ­rats’ use of the fil­i­buster — and every pre­vi­ous Sen­ate’s use of the fil­i­buster — pales in com­par­i­son to Repub­li­cans’ use (or abuse) of it, as this chart from Sen­a­tor Har­ry Rei­d’s office shows:

Repub­li­cans’ unprece­dent­ed obstruc­tion­ism has hurt the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. Some­thing had to be done. Our found­ing fathers believed in major­i­ty rule. James Madi­son and Alexan­der Hamil­ton both wrote in The Fed­er­al­ist that major­i­ty rule was key to a func­tion­ing leg­isla­tive body. Major­i­ty rule goes hand in hand with minor­i­ty rights, of course. But we have the Con­sti­tu­tion to pro­tect minor­i­ty rights. The fil­i­buster is not in the Con­sti­tu­tion. It’s only in Sen­ate rules.

If Repub­li­cans want­ed to keep the fil­i­buster, they could have, by not abus­ing it. But they do not believe in the legit­i­ma­cy of Barack Oba­ma’s pres­i­den­cy and do not want him to be able to fill vacan­cies on our courts. Their posi­tion is ridicu­lous, out­ra­geous, and unac­cept­able. Today’s vote ensures they will no longer be able to pre­vent the Sen­ate from pro­vid­ing advice and con­sent when the Pres­i­dent nom­i­nates some­one to serve on his team or serve as a judge in our fed­er­al judiciary.

This is a great day for Amer­i­ca. We at NPI applaud this his­toric vote and thank our Pacif­ic North­west Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors for being a part of it. As a result of the courage of Sen­ate Democ­rats, the Sen­ate will begin to func­tion more like a real leg­isla­tive body again. More fil­i­buster reform is need­ed, but today’s rules change is so very wel­come. Kudos to Sen­a­tor Reid for putting it together.