Clock ticking for Senate compromise
Showdown due Tuesday on judicial nominee, filibuster's future
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Senators attempting to reach a deal on judicial filibusters said Sunday they would continue working toward a compromise with a crucial vote set for Tuesday.
With some Republicans and Democrats arguing that the other party is threatening to destroy the fabric of the Constitution, a bipartisan group of about a dozen senators has been trying to broker an agreement on President Bush's judicial nominees.
Two of those senators said Sunday on CNN they hoped a deal would be reached but that the prospects remained uncertain.
"It's very hard to handicap it at this point," said Sen. Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat. "But we'll certainly know tomorrow evening."
Sen. Lindsay Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said: "I'm hopeful, but we're running out of time."
Democrats filibustered 10 of Bush's 218 nominees in his first term, saying they are too radical for a lifetime appointment to the bench. The 44 Democrats and one independent in the current Senate have stuck to that position.
Bush has renominated seven of those judges -- including Priscilla Owen, whose nomination to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals faced debate in the Senate last week.
Some frustrated Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, have intimated the Democratic opposition is really against "people of faith."
Unable to garner the 60 votes necessary to end a filibuster -- a form of extended debate that has been part of Senate rules since the early 19th century -- Frist has put into motion what his Republican colleague, Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, has dubbed the "nuclear option."
Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, moved Friday for cloture to end debate on Owen's nomination. The vote is set for Tuesday. (Full story)
If the cloture vote fails, Frist would use some parliamentary maneuvering, with help from Vice President Dick Cheney as the body's presiding officer, to get a vote on a procedural motion that would effectively limit debate on a judicial nominee, according to a scenario described by Senate sources cited in The Washington Post.
Such a procedural motion would not be subject to debate and presumably would pass with a simple majority of 51 votes, instead of the three-fifths supermajority required for cloture on a filibuster.
Once that happens, the Senate would set a time to vote on Owen's nomination, which would require only a simple majority for confirmation.
The "nuclear" aspect of the scenario is that it would effectively circumvent a Senate rule that requires a two-thirds vote of 67 to change a rule.
If the Republican majority eliminates the filibuster, Democrats have threatened to use Senate rules to push their own agenda and disrupt the GOP's -- effectively slowing the chamber's business to a crawl.
"It would be awful if -- as a result of detonating the nuclear option -- the fallout would cause the Senate not to be able to fulfill its duties," Nelson said.
"What's at stake is the rights of the minority to make sure that you don't have a runaway majority," he said.
But Graham countered that "institutionalizing reprisal filibusters" would "destroy the judiciary."
"If every nominee in the future will be treated like these past nominees, you're going to drive good men and women away from wanting to serve," he said.
Graham said, "I'm a yes vote for changing the rules if we have to."
High-stakes deal making
If no compromise if reached, the outcome of Tuesday's vote remains uncertain.
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat, told ABC he thought centrists had the six or seven from each party necessary to cut a deal.
"They don't want the place to blow up," he said. "They want to have an agreement that will allow the Senate to go on and do things about energy and health care and education."
The compromise under consideration, Lieberman said, involves enough senators from each party willing to agree that the Republicans won't vote for the Frist option and the Democrats won't filibuster "under ordinary circumstances."
But, he said, Republicans "have not been willing" to accept the Democratic offer to allow three of the nominees to escape the filibuster.
A draft of a proposed deal that CNN obtained last week would have allowed confirmation votes on five of the seven nominees. (Full story)
Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican involved with the negotiations, said Sunday the compromise under discussion would not necessarily toss out any nominees.
"It's very possible that there would be a vote on all of them," he told Fox News.
The holdup, he said, is "trying to determine exact language which will both protect the rights of the minority ... but also to correct, frankly, what was an abuse of the filibuster."
Democrats and Republicans have accused one another of breaking the Senate's rules in the fight.
Republicans have said no judicial nominee has been filibustered in the Senate's history, although they filibustered the nomination of Abe Fortas to be chief justice in 1968.
Republicans also say all the president's nominees deserve a vote on the Senate floor, although they kept more than 60 of President Clinton's nominees from reaching the full Senate during his eight years in office.
Democrats say the filibuster is a necessary element of Senate tradition, although when they were the majority during the 1990s, some of them tried to do away with it.
All the judges currently under consideration have been tapped for U.S. appellate courts. But at stake down the road are likely Supreme Court nominations -- including the chief justice post.
Approval rating low
The lawmakers went to the Sunday morning political talk shows in the wake of a steady stream of polls showing most Americans have a low opinion of Congress.
An NBC poll last week put Congress' approval rating at its lowest since 1994, and an Associated Press poll put the approval rating only slightly higher. A Pew poll echoed those results, giving Democratic leaders a slight lead over Republicans.
All three polls indicate that about one-third of Americans are happy with the job Congress is doing.
Speaking on ABC, Republican Sen. George Allen of Virginia said he was not concerned that the battle would cost his party seats in the 2006 election.
"I think it's keeping our promises that we made to the American people, and they responded by according us a strength in the majority," Allen said.
But Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said the Republican maneuvers have "worse implications" than judicial votes.
"The vote on Tuesday is going to be critical to decide whether American democracy still allows those of us who didn't vote for the president to have any say in running the country whatsoever," he said on NBC.
