A sharply divided Supreme Court has ruled that the Biden administration overstepped its authority in trying to cancel or reduce student loan debts for millions of Americans.
Technically, they don’t need 60. The cloture rule is what necessitates a 3/5ths supermajority to pass bills, but the cloture rule is not itself a law and so Senators can just… change it with a simple-majority vote. This has already happened twice in the recent past: once in 2013 when the Democrat-led Senate voted to eliminate the cloture rule when nominating federal circuit judges and once more in 2017 when the Ruplican-led Senate voted to eliminate the cloture rule when nominating supreme court justices.
FWIW: Senators tend to really hate doing this. They call it the “nuclear option” because they normally like to get a 2/3rds supermajority agreement before changing any standing Senate rules – not to mention that the cloture rule itself is often treated as a total third-rail even among the other important Senate procedures. Combining the nuclear option and killing cloture is a massive political powderkeg waiting to explode… but maybe it should?
Technically, they don’t need 60. The cloture rule is what necessitates a 3/5ths supermajority to pass bills, but the cloture rule is not itself a law and so Senators can just… change it with a simple-majority vote. This has already happened twice in the recent past: once in 2013 when the Democrat-led Senate voted to eliminate the cloture rule when nominating federal circuit judges and once more in 2017 when the Ruplican-led Senate voted to eliminate the cloture rule when nominating supreme court justices.
FWIW: Senators tend to really hate doing this. They call it the “nuclear option” because they normally like to get a 2/3rds supermajority agreement before changing any standing Senate rules – not to mention that the cloture rule itself is often treated as a total third-rail even among the other important Senate procedures. Combining the nuclear option and killing cloture is a massive political powderkeg waiting to explode… but maybe it should?
I guess full throated fascism and authoritarianism isn’t enough to consider a “nuclear option.”