text: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s threat to change filibuster rules is supposed to narrowly focus on presidential nominees to the executive branch. 
   
   But his potential move to invoke the “nuclear option” is raising a bigger and more sweeping question that could have huge consequences for future presidents of both parties: Is this the beginning of the end of the filibuster? If the filibuster goes, the Senate would lose a crucial check on majority rights — and it could start looking very much like the House, where the majority always gets its way. 
   
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   reset Reid's rant on nominee block McConnell: Crisis manufactured 
   
   For years, the filibuster has been increasingly used as a tool to block, delay and frustrate the will of the majority party to push through its agenda. While the filibuster has been changed periodically over the years, senators have never successfully made good on their threat to impose the “nuclear option” — changing Senate cloture rules by 51 votes, rather than 67 — for fear it would hurt them one day when they were back in the minority. 
   
   (PHOTOS: Longest filibusters in history) 
   
   But those days may now be over. 
   
   On Monday, Reid informed President Barack Obama about his intention to use the nuclear option if no deal is struck, sources said, and Obama signaled he would support the effort. 
   
   Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who is trying to head off the high-stakes fight, privately reached out to Vice President Joe Biden, but it’s expected that Biden would vote with Democrats in case there’s a 50-50 tie. 
   
   The crisis could still be averted. Reid signaled that he would drop the threat of the nuclear option if Republicans ended their filibusters on pending Obama nominees. 
   
   But senators in both parties agreed Thursday that if Reid moves to change the rules by 51 votes, it would be used by the majority in the future to further weaken the filibuster, potentially eliminating the potent procedural weapon altogether one day. While Democrats said they were willing to roll the dice on the nuclear option, believing the GOP would go that route anyway when they get back in the majority, Republicans said Reid’s move all but assured a continued weakening — and eventual demolition — of the filibuster. 
   
   (Also on POLITICO: Reid slams McConnell, ready for nuclear option) 
   
   But Reid said privately it is time to make a change. 
   
   In a closed-door caucus meeting Thursday, Reid began by apologizing to his colleagues for cutting bipartisan deals to avert the nuclear option, including at the beginning of this year. And the Nevada Democrat complained that he allowed votes on scores of conservative nominees under former President George W. Bush after a bipartisan coalition headed off the nuclear option in 2005. But Reid said it had been the right thing to do because Bush had won a second term in the White House. 
   
   Now, Reid argued, times have changed. 
   
   “I ate sh— on some of those nominees,” Reid told his colleagues, according to sources who were present. 
   
   On Thursday, the Senate continued to inch closer to a battle that could have dramatic implications for the institution. 
   
   “I don’t know how you open that door and not go to the next level. First, it’s executive nominations, next thing it’ll be judicial nominations, then it will be legislative filibusters,” said South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the No. 3 Senate Republican. “The precedent they set here will be not only long-lasting but far-reaching.” 
   
   (POLITICO podcast: Immigration reform & Obamacare setbacks) 
   
   Under Reid’s proposal, the Senate would no longer need 60 votes to break a filibuster on executive branch positions, bringing down that threshold to 51 votes. Senators would face a 60-vote requirement to end filibusters on legislation and judicial nominees. 
   
   At the heart of the fight are a handful of nominees Reid has been pushing to confirm. On Thursday, he set up procedural votes on a slate of nominees, but Republicans are poised to block Richard Cordray to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, as well as nominees for the National Labor Relations Board. These nominees are at the center of an ongoing legal struggle over the legality of Obama’s use of recess appointment power to place them at the agencies. ||||| “This will kill the Senate,” thundered Mitch McConnell, rising in opposition to Democratic plans to reform the filibuster. Would that it were true! The Senate exists because the Founding Fathers, who hated the idea of a Senate, gave in to threats from small-state senators demanding disproportionate representation. 
   
   Sadly, Democrats are not about to kill the Senate. They’re not even going to kill the filibuster. What they’re threatening to do is to eliminate the newest and most abusive use of the filibuster. In addition to massively expanding the use of the filibuster to block legislation, Senate Republicans have started using it to block qualified executive branch nominees in order to block the execution of laws they find distasteful. 
   
   Senate Republicans object to existing labor laws and the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. But they also lack the votes to pass changes to them. Instead, they have announced that they will block any nominee to vacant spots in those agencies — not just those deemed unfit or ideologically extreme — which has effectively paralyzed them from carrying out their work, unless Obama agrees to change the laws to suit the GOP. Senate Republicans have managed to largely paralyze labor law and financial reform this way. 
   
   Congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein have called this “the new nullification” — which is to say, a radical tactic to prevent the execution of duly passed laws. McConnell, unsurprisingly, loathes Ornstein, a consummate establishmentarian who has taken the unusual step of fingering Republicans in general and McConnell in particular as the primary agents of Washington dysfunction: 
   
   Senate Democrats are threatening to change the rules of the Senate to allow executive branch nominees to be seated with a simple majority vote. They’re doing it now for several reasons: It’s taken years for the excesses of this tactic to wear down Senate Democrats' inertia. The Senate just passed immigration reform and has no other pending bills that might be threatened if the place blows up. And Democrats are laying the groundwork for Obama to devote his term mainly to executing unilateral laws, not futilely trying to reason with Congress. Obama needs to staff his administration to do this. 
   
   In a fiery speech, McConnell made a series of arguments against this change. One is that Democrats should worry about what will happen when Republicans want to nominate people they don’t like: “They’re not even interested in what this would mean down the road when Republicans are the ones making the nominations.” 
   
   Well, yes, it would prevent Democrats from blocking a Republican president’s attempts to fill his own administration. Democrats did block numerous Bush administration executive branch appointments for various reasons, though never as leverage to force Bush to change the law. The next Republican president will be able to fill out his own administration with a simple majority Senate vote. Not so scary! 
   
   McConnell’s other argument is insanely Orwellian. The issue, he says, is just a handful of “illegal” administration appointments. There’s a short backstory you need to know to understand what an insane argument McConnell is making here. Presidents often respond to blocked nominees by appointing them when Congress is in recess. Congress blocked Obama from doing this by holding pro forma sessions during its recess, which Democrats also used against Republicans. Obama tried to circumvent that tactic by declaring the pro forma sessions (when one Republican was around to gavel in and gavel out) a sham. The Republican-majority D.C. Circuit Court ruled against this tactic. 
   
   Here is how McConnell puts it: "So this isn’t really a fight over nominees at all. It’s a fight over these illegal, unconstitutional nominees." 
   
   But of course they’re only illegal nominees in the first place because McConnell insisted he wouldn’t seat them without changes to the laws they carry out. The attempt to seat them during a sham recess isn’t the cause of the conflict. The cause is McConnell’s blocking of otherwise acceptable nominees in order to force Obama to accept changes to the law he wouldn’t otherwise sign. 
   
   The deeper subtext of McConnell’s argument is not one aimed at the public but at his fellow senators. It’s that the Senate is wonderful and unique, and any changes to its byways would threaten the character of the institution they all love so dearly. This is a deeply held belief by senators. In Washington, senators occupy a place of immense power and political security, catered to by sycophants at every turn, and basking across parties in their senatorial splendor and superiority to the common House. It is certainly true that, for the purposes of maintaining a dignified lifestyle for 100 senators, the Senate continues to function brilliantly. What’s very hard to defend is that the Senate functions perfectly as a vehicle for advancing the national interest. ||||| Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, one of the Republicans who has been reaching out to Democrats to see how they might find a compromise, pleaded with Mr. Reid. “We need to understand your grievances more,” he said. 
   
   Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi tried to broker a joint meeting of Republicans and Democrats next week, and his suggestion underscored the gravity with which senators consider any alteration of their governing rules. He called for a summit in the Old Senate Chamber, the domed, red-velvet-draped room in the Capitol where the Senate met in the 19th century. Mr. Reid ultimately agreed and set the gathering for Monday at 6 p.m. 
   
   Mr. McConnell and other Republicans insisted that their efforts to oppose certain nominees were the norm. They are behaving, they said, just as Democrats did when they wanted to block disputed appointments by Republican presidents, whether it was judges under Mr. Bush or the attorney general under Ronald Reagan. 
   
   Mr. McConnell and other Republicans have signaled in recent days that they were willing to relent on some of the nominees that remain held up, including Gina McCarthy to be director of the Environmental Protection Agency and Thomas E. Perez to be secretary of labor. 
   
   Mr. Reid and Democratic leaders rejected that compromise as unsatisfactory. And a compromise seems unlikely unless the nominees for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the National Labor Relations Board, which is of considerable importance to the labor unions that are so crucial to the Democratic Party, are approved as well. 
   
   Democrats pushing for the rules change argued that it was a targeted approach — inapplicable in most instances — and would not be as egregious as Republicans claim. 
   
   “Now and into the future, Republicans and Democrats should be able to have an up-or-down vote on the team they want to put in place,” said Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, as she walked into the meeting to discuss how Democrats plan to proceed. “I do not view that as an extraordinary step. I do not view it as a nuclear option. I view it as something we sadly had to come to because of the way they’ve obstructed putting really good people in place without cause.” 
   
   Many seemed to agree. 
   
   “The filibuster is a needed tradition, but the methodology needs to change for a new century,” said Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland. Asked whether they were stepping onto a slippery slope, Ms. Mikulski responded blithely: “Every slope is slippery. That’s why they call it a slope.”
target: – Harry Reid says he's ready—no really, he means it this time—to use the so-called "nuclear option" to reform the filibuster. Reid says that unless Republicans allow him to move forward on a host of Obama administration nominees, he'll use a parliamentary maneuver to change the rules allowing them to block the nominees in the first place, the New York Times reports. The threat sent a jolt through the Senate yesterday. Some highlights from the fracas: "The place doesn't work," Reid said of the Senate in a floor speech justifying the move. "The American people know the dysfunction we have here. And all we're asking is let the president have his team." Mitch McConnell was apoplectic. "This will kill the Senate," he declared at one point, saying Reid would go down as "the worst leader of the Senate ever." "Please. Please," Reid rejoined. "If anyone thinks ... the norms and traditions of the Senate have been followed by the Republican leader, they’re living in Gaga Land." That back and forth followed a closed-door heart to heart with Democrats in which Reid apologized for past deals to avoid the nuclear option (particularly this one) and lamented all the Bush nominees he'd let through after relenting in a similar 2005 filibuster showdown. "I ate sh-- on some of those nominees," Reid said, according to Politico. Republican Bob Corker wants to mend fences. "We need to understand your grievances more," he told Reid. Roger Wicker, meanwhile, has asked Reid to hold a bipartisan meeting in the Old Senate Chamber on Monday. The change Reid is proposing is actually pretty modest, New York explains, saying he's killing only "the newest and most abusive use of the filibuster." McConnell and Co. have been blocking any nominees necessary to enforce laws Republicans disagree with, but can't change. But many worry the change could signal the doom of the filibuster entirely. Asked if Democrats were stepping on a slippery slope, Barbara Mikulski quipped, "Every slope is slippery. That's why they call it a slope."