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Nuclear Fallout: The Senate’s Cloture Threshold and Nomination Votes

Nuclear Fallout: The Senate’s Cloture Threshold and Nomination Votes Abstract In November of 2013, Majority Leader Harry Reid and his Democratic colleagues employed a series of parliamentary steps to change the precedent for cloture with respect to presidential nominations. This so called “nuclear option” reduced the threshold for cloture on presidential nominations (except for those to the US Supreme Court) to a simple majority, rather than the 60 votes necessary in the past. The paper examines how this change affected senators’ voting behavior on both cloture and confirmation of presidential nominations, using the 113th Senate as a natural experimental setting. We find that Republican senators are significantly more likely to vote against cloture in the wake of this change, presumably as symbolic votes of protest against the Democrats’ reversal of longstanding precedent. On the whole, the Republican conference votes against cloture, even when they vote overwhelmingly in favor of the nominee on the final confirmation vote. This suggests that cloture may not represent a sincere objection to the nominee in the post-nuclear Senate. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The Forum de Gruyter

Nuclear Fallout: The Senate’s Cloture Threshold and Nomination Votes

Fine, Jeffrey A.; Williams, Margaret S.
The Forum , Volume 14 (2) – Jul 1, 2016
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References (17)

Publisher
de Gruyter
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 by the
ISSN
2194-6183
eISSN
1540-8884
DOI
10.1515/for-2016-0015
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Abstract In November of 2013, Majority Leader Harry Reid and his Democratic colleagues employed a series of parliamentary steps to change the precedent for cloture with respect to presidential nominations. This so called “nuclear option” reduced the threshold for cloture on presidential nominations (except for those to the US Supreme Court) to a simple majority, rather than the 60 votes necessary in the past. The paper examines how this change affected senators’ voting behavior on both cloture and confirmation of presidential nominations, using the 113th Senate as a natural experimental setting. We find that Republican senators are significantly more likely to vote against cloture in the wake of this change, presumably as symbolic votes of protest against the Democrats’ reversal of longstanding precedent. On the whole, the Republican conference votes against cloture, even when they vote overwhelmingly in favor of the nominee on the final confirmation vote. This suggests that cloture may not represent a sincere objection to the nominee in the post-nuclear Senate.

Journal

The Forum – de Gruyter

Published: Jul 1, 2016

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