Pelosi spoke of using all the ‘arrows in their quiver’ to block the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Now we know what tactic they’re planning to break out.
Time and again we see the Democrats willing to exercise raw, bare-knuckled power politics to get their way. We saw it when Schumer used his power to filibuster (and a government shutdown) to block from passing any conservative agenda on the economy and immigration reform. This ran out the clock until Pelosi could get her greedy little mitts on that gavel and run an agenda of her own.
Democrats felt no urgency to come back from a break to pass a COVID bailout, but they hurried back to address the mail system…while they now loudly complain that these hearings cannot go forward because attention is urgently required for the pressing matter of COVID relief.
It’s all about power with these people and not about principle.
We are now hearing the dirty trick Schumer plans to pull off in the Amy Coney Barrett hearings.
He’s planning to prevent the committee from achieving quorum.
The New York Democrat made the statement Sunday about the quorum, which is a minimum number of senators needed for a vote. In the full Senate, the quorum is 51 members, and, for the chamber’s Judiciary Committee, a quorum is nine members including two in the minority Democratic party.
“We will talk about when the actual vote occurs in committee and on the floor. Democrats will not supply the quorum,” Schumer said in a press conference. “Period.” –JustTheNews
Does that mean the nomination will die in committee?
Not necessarily.
There are ways around this. Most notably, the Senate can vote on a discharge resolution that would remove the responsibility of considering the Barrett nomination from the committee, allowing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to call the nomination for a full vote. The committee itself could also change its rules to get rid of the requirement that two Democrats be present, James Wallner, a senior resident fellow for governance at the R Street Institute told Fox News.
“The key for Democrats is to make Republicans’ doing so as painful as possible,” Wallner said about the move to force Republicans to change the committee rules, as well as other procedural moves they could try. “Schumer’s announcement that Democrats have already decided not to attend a committee markup lessens any leverage Democrats can hope to gain in the larger debate by forcing Republicans to change the rules to get Barrett to the floor.” –FoxNews
