National Review
Cotton tries to force demons to vote in lawsuits
Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) On Friday morning he tried to get Democrats to openly state the issue of packaging the court during the Senate’s 15-hour budget reconciliation vote. Cotton’s proposal came about eleven hours after the Senate vote, in which any senator was able to introduce an amendment to the budget resolution, while Democrats seek approval of the president’s $ 1.9 trillion COVID relief plan. Biden without Republican support. Democrats avoided a vote on Cotton’s amendment, citing Byrd’s rule, which says that anything passed during budget reconciliation must have to do with the federal budget. “On second thought, should we change the Senate’s rules on budget resolution?” asked Senator Dick Durbin (D., Ill.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Cotton fell short of the 60 votes needed to waive the law. If the Arkansas Republican had been successful, the amendment could have given the Republican Party a foothold in Senate rules to challenge legislation that would increase the upper court beyond nine judges from now on. That would have added to the Senate rules that it was out of order to consider such legislation, causing three-fifths of the Senate to be forced to vote to overturn the rule if a senator wanted to debate such a bill. “Many Democratic politicians, including Joe Biden, including some senators in this House this evening, have squirmed, turning into pretzels in the election campaign to simply say that we shouldn’t pack the Supreme Court because we don’t like their decisions,” said Cotton in proposing the amendment. Cotton called the Democrats’ initiative to circumvent a direct vote on his amendment of “more contortions to avoid a simple stance on the issue”. “So I would invite my fellow Democrats who said they don’t want to package the court, simply by giving up this point of order and we will vote for or against one of the most fundamental principles of the rule of law, Cotton said. Court packaging became a hot topic in the campaign as progressives asked to expand the court after Republicans moved to confirm Justice Amy Coney Barrett at the Supreme Court just weeks before election day. Barrett’s confirmation gave the court a conservative majority. Barrett’s confirmation, which Democrats viewed as hypocritical in light of Republicans’ refusal to allow former President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, to receive a confirmation hearing in 2016, prompted appeals to pack the court . Biden and Senate Democrats remained elusive on the issue, avoiding questions about whether to support the court’s expansion. Biden never gave a definitive answer on the matter, but instead promised to create a commission to study possible judicial reforms. Durbin responded to Cotton’s proposal, saying: “The Constitution does not stipulate the number of Supreme Court judges. That depends on Congress. “” Congress has a long history of changing the composition of the court, “he added. “For the record, there is exactly one living senator who effectively changed the size of the Supreme Court: this is Senator McConnell, who reduced the court to eight seats for almost a year in the last year of Obama’s presidency.”