For context: The federal court has been perennially over-booked and under-staffed for a number of years because the confirmations of judges to open vacancies were being used as political bargaining chips.<p>Both parties would try to influence the ideological make-up of the judiciary. Back in the good ol' days when the filibuster was used with some modicum of restraint, this meant that a minority party could prevent over-ideological candidates from getting elected. But, over time, the process evolved to the point where the party out-of-power would try to block <i>all</i> nominations so that when they were back in-power in several years, they had more vacancies to fill with their own ideologically-pure candidates.<p>Purely in terms of government fulfilling its obligated duties to function, this is an improvement because the judiciary will now become staffed. However, the lack of a filibuster threat will probably push us away from politically neutral appointments, towards an alternating (and hopefully balanced over time?) mix of biases in opposite directions.<p>tl;dr this is why we can't have nice things.
For anyone uninformed on this matter, a few facts:<p>1) The Senate is a majority body, but it requires a 60 vote (i.e. 60%) threshold to cut off debate and force a vote on a bill; otherwise, debate continues indefinitely.<p>2) In practice, this obviously can lead to the Senate becoming a supermajority body if filibusters are routinely exercised. In the last 5-10 years, this has become the case. For instance, this is an example of a bill that "failed" despite receiving a 54-46 vote.<p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/04/17/senate-to-vote-on-amendments-to-gun-bill-with-background-check-plan-in-doubt/" rel="nofollow">http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/04...</a><p>3) This rule change would only apply to presidential appointments. The 60-vote threshold would remain in place for other bills.
This is a poor decision - the party in power will be able to appoint extremists.<p>This may be temporary pleasing, but at some point the other party will be in power, with the net result that the judiciary will be filled judges of less moderation and more politics.
Just a shot across the bow.<p>If we continue to see blanket obstructionism on legislation, I expect to see the filibuster limited there too (or made more difficult). That is when the cannonballs will start flying.
Given Sen Reid's defense of the filibuster and opposition to a rules change in 2005, we basically see that this isn't for the good of the country, it is basic, bad politics.<p>The Senate is not supposed to be efficient and the minority party needs to have a say. It is that simple. People pointing out the good old days, don't actually remember them.
The argument for not appointing any more appeals judges was that the caseload was light enough, that no more were needed.<p>In my opinion, it was right for the Senate to give up a little power here. They should be exercising more oversight powers in other areas.