Obama endorses Senate rule change to enable simple majority action

President Barack Obama on Thursday expressed support for the step a majority of senators took to allow a simple majority to consider judicial and public service nominations. "All too often we have seen a single senator or a handful of senators choose to abuse arcane procedural tactics to unilaterally block bipartisan compromises or to prevent well-qualified, patriotic Americans from filling critical positions of public service in our system of government," Obama said in remarks at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House. "It has harmed our economy, and it has been harmful to our democracy, and it has brought us to the point where a simple majority vote no longer seems to be sufficient for anything, even routine business through what is supposed to be the world's greatest deliberative body," the President said. "A deliberate and determined effort to obstruct everything, no matter what the merits, just to refight the result of an election is not normal, and for the sake of future generations, we cannot let it become normal," Obama said. "Over the six decades before I took office, only 20 presidential nominees to executive positions had to overcome filibusters," he said. "In just under five years since I took office, nearly 30 nominees have been treated this way." The President noted that his judicial nominees have waited nearly two and a half times longer to receive yes or no votes on the Senate floor than those of former President George W. Bush, "and the ones who eventually do get a vote generally are confirmed with little if any dissent." "So this is not obstruction on substance, on qualifications," he said. "It is just to gum up the works. And this gridlock in Congress causes gridlock in much of our criminal and civil justice systems." The filibuster, which had required a 60-vote majority instead of a 51-vote majority for approval of a nominee, was "no longer used in a responsible way to govern," he said. "It is rather used as a reckless and relentless tool to grind all business to a halt." That is not what the founders of the U.S. government intended, "and it is certainly not what our country needs right now," Obama said. The gears of government have to work, "and the step that the majority of senators took today I think will help make those gears work just a little bit better," he said.