AFJ commends Senate for changing rules

So many people wanted to know our take on this that it crashed our website for awhile, so we posted our statement on today's rules reform victory here.  But the site is back up and you can find out more about Senate rules reform and the D.C. Circuit at www.afj.org

WASHINGTON, D.C., November 21, 2013 – Alliance for Justice President Nan Aron issued the following statement in response to today’s vote to change the rules of the Senate: 

Alliance for Justice commends Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Senators who voted to change Senate rules today for their courageous decision to end the unprecedented abuse of Senate rules by a Republican minority dedicated to obstruction-at-all-costs.

This was not a decision made easily or taken lightly. There was no choice. The Republican minority had turned the existing rules into weapons of mass obstruction. Most recently, they acknowledged that they had no grounds to oppose on the merits President Obama’s supremely-qualified nominees for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. But they filibustered those nominees anyway.

This change in the rules is the only way to return the Senate to its place as the world’s greatest deliberative body; it is the only way to ensure that the Senate can put the well-being of the American people ahead of the political interests of an extremist minority.

Now that the rules have changed, the Senate must move quickly to confirm President Obama’s D.C. Circuit nominees, and all of the other nominees that, until now, have been held hostage to obstruction. Those nominees include 14 more nominees for judgeships who are currently awaiting Senate floor votes, and executive branch nominees such as Rep. Mel Watt, D-N.C., whose nomination to run the Federal Housing Finance Agency was filibustered last month.

Now the full Senate needs to vote on on Pillard nomination for D.C. Circuit

Alliance for Justice President Nan Aron issued the following statement in response to the vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee today on President Obama’s nomination of Nina Pillard to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit:

We commend the majority of the Senate Judiciary Committee for supporting President Obama’s nomination of Nina Pillard for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.  We are disappointed, but not surprised, that all of the committee’s Republicans chose to put politics ahead of qualifications and opposed this outstanding nominee.

The American people have good reason to be fed up with Republican obstruction and delay.  They demand and deserve courts that have enough judges to administer justice fairly and swiftly.  Americans are entitled to a swift yes-or-no vote by the full Senate on Nina Pillard and President Obama’s other judicial nominees.

Read more about Nina Pillard in this previous post to Justice Watch

AFJ: Tom Perez will be an outstanding Secretary of Labor

Alliance for Justice President Nan Aron released the following statement today in response to the Senate vote to confirm Tom Perez as Secretary of Labor: 

The new Secretary of Labor:
Tom Perez

We are pleased that the Senate voted to confirm President Obama’s choice to run the Department of Labor. Tom Perez will be an outstanding Secretary of Labor.  He has spent his professional career in public service, committed to ensuring a fairer and more just society.  His confirmation is an important step in the fight for the preservation of the fundamental  rights of working Americans.

This must be only the beginning.  The Senate also should confirm the President's nominees for the National Labor Relations Board and the Environmental Protection Agency.  And it must move swiftly to confirm the president's nominees for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and all federal courts.

Read our previous statements on Tom Perez 

AFJ: Reported agreement on Obama nominees "an important step forward"

               Alliance for Justice President Nan Aron released the following statement today in response to media reports of an agreement concerning seven of President Obama’s executive branch nominations:

                The agreement, as described in media accounts, is an important step forward for the United States Senate and for the American people whose interests are served when government functions.  But it is not the end of the story.  There will be more legislation, more executive nominations and judicial nominees upon which the Senate will need to act over the next several months.  We hope the spirit of this agreement carries over to that business as well.  But if it does not, all options remain on the table for allowing the Senate to evolve in ways that make it a more effective institution.

              Today’s events demonstrate what can happen when a strong, unified, principled stand is taken against obstruction and dysfunction, and we will work hard to ensure that this same sense of purpose and firm resolve will be present when judicial nominations and vital legislation make their way to the Senate floor in the coming months.

            If this agreement fails to cure the culture of obstruction, we will fight for the reforms necessary to end the paralyzing gridlock that has characterized the Senate over the last several months.
 
         

Nan Aron on "The Broken Senate"

This is AFJ President Nan Aron's statement for today's forum at the National Press Club called "Fixing the Broken Senate: Restoring Democracy and Fixing the Filibuster."  

 ●Watch video of the forum at www.afj.org 
 ● Read more about Senate rules reform

Alliance for Justice is very pleased to be a part of this discussion about the “Broken Senate.” I feel like we’re coming to the end of the fifth season of a bad reality show.

Nan Aron

But what’s happening in the Senate is not fiction. It’s very real. The abuse of the filibuster has become a threat to the proper functioning of the government and to public faith in the institution of the Senate.  A recent poll by The Economist put the approval rate of Congress at nine percent. That’s incredible, but not really surprising.  It does make me wonder who those nine percent are. Family members? Campaign consultants?

It’s deplorable that the American people have so little regard for a crucial part of our government. It’s unhealthy for our democracy. And I don’t think there is any question that at least part of the problem has been the rampant misuse of the filibuster in the Senate, which has led to stalemate and gridlock in spite of the enormous problems the country now faces.

Let me be clear about something: The filibuster has a legitimate role when used responsibly. But we have entered an era of unprecedented abuse of rules and traditions, which is forcing the Senate to the brink of drastic action. The filibuster traditionally has been used to allow a minority to make a principled stand on matters of enormous and unusual importance.  It forces the process to slow down and helps ensure that all voices are heard. It’s a signal that something of significance is at stake. But that’s not what’s happening now.

This is the crucial point to understand.  As the motivation behind the filibuster has changed and its frequency increased, its legitimacy has declined. The fights over President Obama’s judicial nominees, for instance, are not ideological in any real sense. The president has gone out of his way to nominate men and women from the legal and political mainstream. Who could honestly say that the filibuster of Caitlin Halligan was some kind of titanic ideological fight?

Today’s filibusters are just crass politics. They reflect a desire to block the president’s agenda at every turn and feed the insatiable need of a hyper-partisan political base for endless obstruction. We’re in an era where one side believes cooperation is a dirty word—or an invitation to a primary challenge. When that intransigent attitude is paired with a procedural weapon as potent as the filibuster, gridlock is the result.  And that’s what makes the situation different today from what it has been in the past. And that’s why the nuclear option is back on the table.


Serious talk about changing the rules has been reborn because the filibuster has evolved from a                            
targeted tool to a weapon of indiscriminate disruption. The entire legislative process is now held captive to this threat. We’ve gotten to the point where just the threat of a filibuster is enough to derail the Senate. The abuse of the process has created a de facto threshold of 60 votes for action—a supermajority requirement for everyday business that can be found nowhere in the Constitution.

It’s important to remember that the problem isn’t just that bills and nominations with clear majorities are stopped, but that many nominations are never made and bills are never proposed, even though they could achieve a simple majority if they were given a chance. There is an invisible price for gridlock that the public never sees.

Obviously, the first test will come in the next few days when cloture petitions are expected to be filed on a series of executive branch nominees—Richard Cordray, Tom Perez, Gina McCarthy, and nominees for the National Labor Relations Board. What happens to these highly qualified nominees will set the tone for the rest of this Congress. If Republicans continue their current behavior and prevent final votes, then the choices will be narrowed to two options: allow crucial agencies that deal with hugely important issues to be left leaderless or reform the rules to permit up-or-down votes.

But the battle over executive nominees is just the beginning. The next big fight looming later this summer is over the President’s three nominees to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.  This is a case of the Republicans engaging in what will be a kind of Group Filibuster, where they don’t even pretend to care about the qualifications or ideologies of the individual nominees.  They just don’t want anyone appointed by President Obama to this crucial court no matter who they are.

Senator Grassley has complained that the President is trying to “pack the court,” as if filling vacant judgeships is some kind of unprecedented power grab. Republicans pretend to be outraged that the president has sent names forward for empty seats on the 11-member D.C. Circuit--just like every other president has done since the Grover Cleveland administration. This would be laughable if the consequences weren’t so serious.

Of course, we know why the Republicans will threaten to filibuster Patricia Millett, Nina Pillard, and Robert Wilkins. The D.C. Circuit is the federal appeals court that most closely oversees the actions of federal agencies on topics like the environment, consumer protections, workers’ rights, banking regulations, and other vital issues. Those are the same issues, by the way, that are at stake in the current executive nominations fights.  In some ways, the two big summer battles over executive and judicial nominations are really one big fight over the future of the country. Fair enough. But the question is, will the Senate be permitted to bring these issues to a final vote on the merits, or will procedural hurdles be erected to prevent democracy from functioning.

So at some point in the next several months, when the three DC Circuit nominees reach the floor, the Senate will have to make another set of choices, just like the ones it will start to face next week on executive nominations. Either accept the obstructionism of a hyper-partisan minority or change the rules to allow the President and the Senate to do the jobs the Constitution demands of them.

For those who care about our democracy and the courts, the choice is easy.

The American people are saying enough is enough. The time for reform is rapidly approaching.

At hearing for ATF nominee, more Republican obstruction

On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a high-profile hearing on President Obama’s nominee to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, B. Todd Jones.    Jones is an exceptionally qualified nominee.  He currently serves as both the acting director of ATF and as the U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota (a position for which he was unanimously approved by the Judiciary Committee in 2009).

B. Todd Jones

Though ATF plays a critical law enforcement role, including involvement in investigating tragedies like the Sandy Hook school shootings, the Boston Marathon bombing, and the industrial explosion in West, Texas, the agency has not had a permanent director since 2006 – that’s when the law was changed to require Senate confirmation That sad reality may continue, as Republican questions at the  hearing suggest that they may continue to obstruct executive nominees as a way to prevent agencies they don’t like from functioning.

Many Republican questions raised tangential concerns about Jones’s record.  For instance, the Committee’s ranking member, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa)—yes, the very same senator who wants to get rid of three judicial seats on the second most important court in the country, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals—pressed Jones to answer for a botched ATF operation, Fast and Furious.  But Jones  actually was brought in to clean up after the fact.

Moreover, just before the hearing ended, there was a telling exchange between Grassley and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.).  Sen. Grassley requested that the hearing record remain open for longer than the normal one week period, based on the expectation that  there were “a lot of things that could come up.”  Senator Klobuchar agreed to keep it open for two weeks.  Sensing dissatisfaction in Grassley’s reaction, she asked, “What would you like?”  Senator Grassley responded, “Until we get done with this whole [thing].”  While the senators’ quick negotiation seemed to be good-spirited, it sounds like  Sen. Grassley has no interest in quickly moving Jones’s nomination to the Senate floor.  This stonewalling is particularly hypocritical in light of repeated Republican statements that we don’t need new gun laws, we just need to “enforce the laws on the books.”  

Of course, Jones is just one of a slew of highly qualified Obama nominees that Republicans so farhave refused to confirm because they disapprove of the organization itself (see EPA Administrator nominee Gina McCarthy, CFPB director nominee Richard Cordray, Labor Secretary nominee Tom Perez, and three NLRB nominees.  If Republicans continue to hold agencies hostage by unfairly blocking confirmations, the Senate majority should revisit reforming Senate rules.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau strikes blow against forced arbitration

For many of us it may be the most important contract we ever sign.  It’s the contract that sets the terms for what often is our single largest investment – our home.

Richard Cordray

But what happens if the bank that holds our mortgage tries to cheat?  What if they improperly hide fees, or raise rates or even try to foreclose on the property illegally?  Banks have sought to protect themselves by inserting “forced arbitration” clauses into mortgages and home equity loans.

As we’ve noted previously on this Blog, under forced arbitration, consumers who buy defective products or are overcharged for services are barred from taking their cases to court.  Instead, they must use a private arbitration firm chosen and paid for by the business itself.  These clauses also often ban class actions, which allow individuals to band together to bring their common claims.

Having a dispute settled by arbitration is like playing a baseball game in which the other team hires, fires – and pays – the umpires.  One study of top arbitrators for one major arbitration firm found that they rule for the corporations that hire them 93.8 percent of the time.

One of the reasons we refer to the current Supreme Court majority as “The 1% Court” is its enthusiasm for inflicting forced arbitration on consumers.

But Congress drew the line at home mortgages.  Section 1414 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act bans forced arbitration in mortgage disputes.  Regulations implementing the law had to be issued by an agency created by that law – the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  Those regulations took effect June 1. Section 1028 of the Act also mandates that the CFPB study and report to Congress on “the use of agreements providing for arbitration . . . in connection with the offering or providing of consumer products or financial services.”

You remember the CFPB.  That’s the agency Republicans hate so much that they’ve vowed to filibuster anyone President Obama nominates to run it unless the President agrees to eviscerate Wall Street reform.  That includes the current agency director, Richard Cordray, named to the position through a recess appointment that was called into question by a ruling of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The new forced arbitration regulation makes clear what this fight and the other fights over President Obama’s nominees really are all about.  They're about Republicans who can’t stand Wall Street reform or consumer protection or anything that gives everyday Americans a fighting chance against corporate special interests.

That’s why the fights ahead over Cordray, and President Obama’s nominees to the D.C. Circuit and his  nominees for posts like Secretary of Labor, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator and the National Labor Relations Board, are so important.  That’s why, if Senate Republicans refuse to allow yes-or-no votes on these nominees, the Senate majority needs to revisit reforming Senate rules.

AFJ responds to withdrawal of Halligan nomination

The White House announced late Friday that it is withdrawing the nomination of Caitlin Halligan to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.  Here is AFJ President Nan Aron's response:

Caitlin Halligan

The withdrawal of this highly-qualified nominee is one more illustration of the extent to which Republicans have used unprecedented, partisan obstruction to hijack the United States Senate.  It is still another indication, as if any were needed, that Senate Democrats need to revisit Senate rules reform, and stand up to the tyranny of the minority.

We are confident that President Obama now will press ahead with nominating individuals to fill all three D.C. Circuit  vacancies still  without nominees – and will make the fight for these nominees a top priority.  

Read more about Caitlin Halligan here.

AFJ Responds to agreement on Senate rules reform

WASHINGTON, D.C.,  January 24, 2013 — Alliance for Justice President Nan Aron issued the following statement on today’s agreement concerning reforming the rules of the United States Senate:

Today’s agreement to enact incremental reforms to Senate rules, while containing some provisions that may prove to be of significant value in mitigating the calamitous mistreatment of judicial nominations, does not go as far as we would like in the direction of meaningful change on the broader issues confronting our country.

While we are particularly happy to see long-overdue changes to the rules governing filibusters of district court nominees, we remain disappointed that circuit court nominations remain subject to the kind of destructive obstruction that has characterized President Obama’s first term. Limiting post-cloture debate to two hours serves as an implicit acknowledgement of the unprecedented degree to which Republicans have inappropriately used procedural weapons to delay and derail these important nominations. This agreement holds out hope that some degree of comity may now return to the Senate for district court nominees, but at the same time we urge Senate leaders to use every tool at their disposal to prevent the widespread obstruction of circuit court nominees that has characterized the past four years.

Although we had hoped for a more robust package, we are encouraged by the spirit of reform and activism led by Sens. Jeff Merkley, Tom Udall, and Tom Harkin, carried forward by dozens of organizations, and given voice by hundreds of thousands of Americans, hungry for progress, who contacted their senators to demand change. The American people deserve a Senate that is willing and able to tackle the great issues that confront the nation, and we will watch diligently in the days ahead to see whether today’s agreement is sufficient to ensure that is the case.

Huffington Post asks AFJ, CWA to write about ending gridlock

As part of a series on President Obama's second term, The Huffington Post commissioned a special column from Alliance for Justice President Nan Aron and Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America, on ending gridlock.  Their solution: real reform of Senate rules:

Ending Congressional Gridlock Requires

Curbing Abuse of the Filibuster

 

Jefferson Smith, the fictional filibustering senator in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, has captivated the imaginations of many Americans. But when was the last time a senator took a principled stand in the form of an around-the-clock speech, then collapsed with exhaustion, having convinced the crooked political establishment to mend its misguided ways?

Now is the time to stop looking to a 73-year-old Hollywood movie for inspiration and start fixing the way the Senate does business so that a latter-day Mr. Smith can actually take a stand for genuine matters of principle. There's growing momentum to end legislative obstruction by changing the rules when the new Senate reconvenes later this month. Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Tom Udall (D-N.M.) have introduced Senate Resolutions 4 and 6, which mirror the filibuster reforms supported by Fix the Senate Now, a coalition of 50 progressive organizations. And Democrats have the votes to revamp the rules.

 

Read the full column here - and please let readers know what you think by clicking "like" and posting a comment on the Huffington Post site.

We can fix the Senate – with your help

Sign our petition for Senate rules reform

We’ve stepped up our campaign for Senate rules reform with a petition drive.  Please sign our petition urging Senators to cosponsor Senate Resolution 4.  The resolution makes several key changes to Senate rules to end the unprecedented obstruction that has brought the business of the Senate almost to a halt.

 

One piece of progressive legislation after another has been killed by filibuster.  Scores of judicial nominations have been delayed – and now some Republicans may use the filibuster against President Obama’s Cabinet nominees.

Without rules reform, the gridlock continues. That means the fate of almost every other big issue before Congress – from gun control to who sits on the federal bench to who leads the most important agencies in the executive branch - may depend on the outcome of the rules reform fight.

Sign the petition here

Get more information:

● Read the list of reforms

● Details of the reform plan

● Learn more about why we need to fix the Senate

● Hear the press briefing

Call your Senator today to demand Senate rules reform

We've written often about the failure of the United States Senate to confirm judges.  But that failure is part of a wider failure – the failure of the Senate itself, brought on by the unprecedented misuse of arcane rules and procedures by the Republican minority.

Abuse of the filibuster is prolonging the crisis in our federal courts, giving new meaning to the term “obstruction of justice.”

It’s not only judicial nominations that are at stake.   The filibuster has been abused to derail vital legislation, supported by a majority of the American people, and a majority of U.S. Senators, paralyzing progress on jobs, clean energy, workers’ rights, and immigration.

To an extent unprecedented in American history, 60 votes has become the needed threshold for nearly every order of Senate business. Under the current broken system, senators do not even have to stand up and talk to block a bill.  We believe they should be accountable for their actions.

Senators can fix this problem. Call your senators at 1-888-717-0911 and ask them to reform the rules.  Tell your Senators to support reforms that would:

●  Reduce the time for debate on nominations.

●  Require that if Senators want to filibuster, they have to do it the old-fashioned way – stand up and talk.  Now a Senator can derail a bill merely by saying he or she intends to filibuster.

●  Necessitate 41 votes to keep a filibuster going – instead of requiring the majority to muster 60 votes to stop it.

●  Allow only one filibuster per bill – now even the decision to discuss a bill at all, called a motion to proceed, can be filibustered.

Read more about Senate rules reform here.

When the next Congress takes office in January, the Senate will have one opportunity to reform the rules with a simple majority vote.  We are already gaining extraordinary momentum and are confident with the outcome this time around.  But we can't do it without you!

We need you to join us in a national day of action to support Senate rules reform. Call 1-888-717-0911  today and ask your senators to support reforms that will ensure that they can debate and vote on the critical issues facing our country.

The New York Times takes on "a severe breakdown in the process for appointing federal judges"

Making extensive use of AFJ's resources on judicial selection, The New York Times has an excellent editorial on that topic today:

Judges Needed for Federal Courts

There has been a severe breakdown in the process for appointing federal judges. At the start of the Reagan years, it took, on average, a month for candidates for appellate and trial courts to go from nomination to confirmation. In the first Obama term, it has taken, on average, more than seven months.

Seventy-seven judgeships, 9 percent of the federal bench (not counting the Supreme Court), are vacant; 19 more seats are expected to open up soon. The lack of judges is more acute if one considers the growing caseload. The Judicial Conference, the courts’ policy-making body, has recommended expanding the bench by 88 additional judgeships.

President Obama must make fully staffing the federal courts an important part of his second-term agenda — starting with the immediate Senate confirmation of the 18 nominees approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

A significant reason for the slowdown has been the partisan opposition of Republicans to appeals court and even to trial court nominations, even though almost none of the nominees have backgrounds that raise ideological issues. The Republicans have time and again used the filibuster, the threat of filibuster, holds on nominations and other tactics to block confirmations.

The Democratic majority, led by Senator Harry Reid, can speed up the process by limiting use of the filibuster. He can do so by pushing for a simple majority vote at the start of the January session to alter Senate rules so that every judicial and executive-branch nominee is assured an up-or-down vote within 90 days. Without that change, many judicial nominations will founder.

The full editorial is available here.