Dem's nuclear Option

Democrats’ nuclear option over Comey’s firing: shut down the Senate

Updated by Jeff Stein  May 10, 2017, 3:10pm EDT

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DNC Chair Tom Perez at a protest outside of the White House on Wednesday

 Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Senate Democrats infuriated by President Donald Trump’s abrupt firing of FBI Director James Comey have begun weighing a “nuclear option” against Senate Republicans to try to force them to commit to an independent investigation of Trump’s ties to Russia — pulling a procedural move to halt all day-to-day activity in the Senate. In other words, going on a kind of strike.
Democrats are holding off on pulling the trigger — at least for now.
"I hope it doesn’t get there,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the number two ranking Democrat, said in an interview on Wednesday when asked if Senate Democrats would try to essentially shut down the upper chamber of Congress. “I’m hoping for a bipartisan approach to this. But let’s wait and see.”
Here’s how Senate Democrats’ “nuclear option” over Comey would work: Unlike the House of Representatives, the Senate operates under what are called “unanimous consent” agreements. If Senate Democrats withhold their consent, the routine functioning of the body — from committee hearings to routine floor votes — could grind to an immediate halt.
“It would stop everything in the Senate and effectively shut it down,” said Josh Huder, a congressional scholar at Georgetown’s Government Affairs Institute. “If they go down this road, things could get pretty slow and ugly in the Senate.”

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