{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.hatch.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/op-eds?ContentRecord_id=2fcfe3d1-d974-4859-87c7-53282520b138", "After Harry Reid, the GOP Shouldnt Unilaterally Disarm", "2014-11-06", "2014", "2014-11", "Republican", "House", "UT", "Orrin Hatch", "H000338", "www.hatch.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "By ORRIN G. HATCH And  C. BOYDEN GRAY \n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\tAfter the 2006 midterm elections delivered control of the Senate to the Democratic Party, incoming Senate Majority Leader\u00a0Harry Reid\u00a0declared that it was \u201ctime for bipartisanship, it\u2019s time for open government, transparency, and it\u2019s a time for results.\u201d Eight years later, we know all too well what those \u201cresults\u201d turned out to be\u2014and they did not include bipartisanship, openness or transparency. The Democratic Party\u2019s opaque, aggressively unilateral approach to government spurred voters to return the Senate to Republican control this week.\r\nIn preparing to lead, Senate Republicans must not repeat the Democratic majority\u2019s excesses. Instead, our party must now begin the hard work of repairing much institutional damage. After six years of disregarding its constitutional responsibilities, the Senate must once again become a forum for meaningful deliberation and must stand as a true check and balance against executive-branch overreach.\r\nSpecifically, the new Senate must begin by restoring the twin pillars of the institution\u2019s deliberative character: full debate and an open amendment process. Sen. Robert C. Byrd described those two institutional safeguards\u2014open debate and amendment\u2014as bulwarks that ensure \u201cthe liberties of the people will remain secure.\u201d In the end, the Senate\u2019s procedural safeguards exist not to protect individual senators, but to preserve Americans\u2019 liberty.\r\nBut that fundamental goal\u2014protecting liberty\u2014counsels against blindly returning to the prior status quo. Some bells cannot be unrung. Chief among these is Sen. Reid\u2019s decision to invoke the \u201cnuclear option\u201d to strip minority senators of their ability to filibuster judicial nominees.\r\nThe nuclear option allowed President Obama and his allies to reshape the judicial branch dramatically to suit their far-left agenda. And the Democrats were not shy in boasting of their achievement. This summer, after a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit struck down the administration\u2019s efforts to extend subsidies to the federal ObamaCare exchange\u2014in clear violation of the plain words of the Affordable Care Act and the stated intent of its architects\u2014the newly minted majority of Democratic appointees on that court voted to rehear the case \u201cen banc.\u201d Sen. Reid announced that the \u201csimple math\u201d of the D.C. Circuit\u2019s new majority of Democratic-appointed judges would serve to \u201cvindicate\u201d Democrats\u2019 use of the nuclear option, presumably by preserving the administration\u2019s signature legislative achievement.\r\nSimilar effects are seen throughout the federal courts. As the New York Times reported on Sept. 13, \u201cjudges appointed by Democratic presidents\u201d now \u201cconsiderably outnumber judges appointed by Republican presidents,\u201d and that \u201cadvantage has only grown since late last year when [Democrats] stripped Republicans of their ability to filibuster the president\u2019s nominees.\u201d Liberal legal commentator Jeffrey Toobin declared in the Oct. 27 New Yorker magazine that the nuclear option\u2019s sudden transformation of the federal judiciary has \u201ccemented Obama\u2019s judicial legacy.\u201d\r\nIt will fall to the next Republican president to counteract President Obama\u2019s aggressive efforts to stack the federal courts in favor of his party\u2019s ideological agenda. But achieving such balance would be made all the more difficult\u2014if not impossible\u2014if Republicans choose to reinstate the previous filibuster rule now that the damage to the nation\u2019s judiciary has already been done.\r\nTo restore the rule now, after Mr. Obama has installed his controversial judges, would cement a partisan double standard: When Democrats control the White House and Senate, judicial nominations need only 50 votes; but when Republicans control both, judicial nominations require 60 votes, allowing Democratic minorities to block Republican nominations.\r\nThis would be only the latest example of a destructive pattern of double standards. Under President Reagan and President George H.W. Bush, Senate Democrats savaged the Robert Bork, David Souter and\u00a0Clarence Thomas\u00a0nominations. During the Clinton administration, Republicans were largely deferential to the Ruth Bader Ginsburg and\u00a0Stephen Breyer\u00a0nominations, an olive branch that Democrats ignored as they attacked the\u00a0John Roberts\u00a0and Samuel Alito nominations and launched unprecedented filibusters of lower-court nominations under President\u00a0George W. Bush\u00a0. (For all of its harm, at least the nuclear option restored the pre-2003 tradition against filibustering judicial nominations, which Democrats violated in order to block the\u00a0George W. Bush\u00a0nominees.)\r\nSimply put, if Republicans re-establish the judicial-nomination filibuster, it would remain in place only until the moment that a new Democratic majority decided that discarding the rule again would be useful.\r\nIndeed, Republican willingness to restore the old filibuster rule would only increase Democrats\u2019 incentives to engage in further rule changes in the future. If Republicans refuse to hold Democrats to the new nominations rules they set for the Senate, Democrats will have no reason to fear that they may someday bear the costs of their own tactics.\r\nThe Senate can and must be restored as a check on executive-branch overreach, a forum for true legislative debate and a bulwark for liberty. But unilateral disarmament on nominations would only invite further damage to the institution.\r\nNOTE: This op-ed appeared in the Wall Street Journal on November 6, 2014.", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.hatch.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/op-eds?ContentRecord_id=2fcfe3d1-d974-4859-87c7-53282520b138"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.534226980060339, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}