{"id":9463,"date":"2025-05-21T01:47:05","date_gmt":"2025-05-21T01:47:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/democrats-vow-payback-in-senate-rules-fight\/"},"modified":"2025-05-21T01:47:05","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T01:47:05","slug":"democrats-vow-payback-in-senate-rules-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/democrats-vow-payback-in-senate-rules-fight\/","title":{"rendered":"Democrats vow payback in Senate rules fight"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Senate Democrats are vowing that Republicans will face consequences over their decision to hold a vote to nix California\u2019s emission standard waivers \u2014 even after receiving non-binding guidance from the chamber’s parliamentarian that those waivers didn\u2019t qualify for reversal under the Congressional Review Act process.<\/p>\n

The rhetorical warning shots come after Majority Leader John Thune announced that Republicans, after weeks of internal party deliberations, would officially move forward with floor votes on three disapproval resolutions to eliminate the Biden-era EPA waivers that effectively let California set its own emission standards.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going nuclear plain and simple, it\u2019s overruling the parliamentarian,\u201d Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters. \u201cWhat goes around, comes around.\u201d<\/p>\n

Republicans haven\u2019t yet outlined what procedural hurdles they will need to clear to get the resolutions to final votes of adoption on Wednesday. The Government Accountability Office concluded the waivers didn’t qualify for repeal under the CRA, which lets Congress overturn certain administration rules with a simple majority threshold in the Senate within a certain window of time. The Senate parliamentarian backed the GAO up in its findings.<\/p>\n

But Republicans \u2014 and a handful of Democrats \u2014 are vehemently opposed to the waivers, saying they are overly burdensome and unrealistic. The House went ahead and voted to repeal the waivers with CRA resolutions in recent weeks with some Democratic support.<\/p>\n

Democrats are warning, though, that moving forward now in repealing the waivers through the CRA in the Senate will be akin to deploying the \u201cnuclear option,\u201d a term both parties use for changing the Senate\u2019s rules, and which will come back to bite Republicans when they are back in the minority.<\/p>\n

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Finance Committee, said Tuesday that if Republicans proceed, \u201cthey should expect that a future Democratic government will have to revisit decades worth of paltry corporate settlements, deferred prosecution agreements, and tax rulings.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThese partisan actions cut both ways,\u201d Wyden added.<\/p>\n

Democrats are also privately strategizing over more immediate consequences for Republicans, though they haven\u2019t yet specified what those would look like as they wait to see how Republicans will try to get the disapproval resolutions to final votes.<\/p>\n

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), for instance, announced Tuesday that he will slow-walk four EPA nominees and more actions could be in the offing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s a growing list of potential CRAs that we may bring, and we don’t have to wait until we’re back in the majority to bring them. There are some CRAs that we would likely bring in the coming weeks, months, if Republicans go through with this,\u201d Padilla said in a brief interview, though he declined to talk specifically about Trump administration actions Democrats might try to undo.<\/p>\n

Republicans, for their part, have hinted they want to keep the Senate\u2019s focus on the role of the GAO rather than the parliamentarian, who many in the GOP ranks are wary of directly defying.<\/p>\n

Elizabeth MacDonough, the parliamentarian, confirmed Tuesday through a GOP senator presiding over the chamber floor that she had advised leadership offices that the disapproval resolutions didn\u2019t qualify for reversal under the CRA.<\/p>\n

Still, Republicans have bristled over Democratic protests that they are undercutting the legislative filibuster, noting that nearly every Democrat voted during the Biden administration on an unsuccessful attempt to create a carve-out to lower the threshold for voting rights legislation.<\/p>\n

Democrats have cast the move by Republicans to ignore the parliamentarian as a warning sign they could be willing to flout her on other things, too \u2014 like what policies can and can’t be included in the GOP\u2019s party-line tax and spending package that could be coming over from the House as soon as this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only people who have attempted to get rid of the legislative filibuster are the Democrats,\u201d Thune said. \u201cEvery single one of them up there that\u2019s popping up and spotting off has voted, voted literally, to get rid of the legislative filibuster. This is a novel and narrow issue that deals with the government accountability office.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senate Democrats are vowing that Republicans will face consequences over their decision to hold a vote to nix California\u2019s emission standard waivers \u2014 even after receiving non-binding guidance from the chamber’s parliamentarian that those waivers didn\u2019t qualify for reversal under the Congressional Review Act process. The rhetorical warning shots come after Majority Leader John Thune […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9463\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}