As Republicans Move to End Filibuster, Whitehouse Lays Out the Facts

Washington, D.C.— U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, took to the Senate Floor as Republicans began the process to overrule the Parliamentarian and exercise the nuclear option:

“Notwithstanding the distinguished Majority Leader's accusations of mendacity and hypocrisy and misrepresentation, the facts at heart here are quite simple. The waiver at issue is not a rule and was never a rule. Thirty years of precedent and practice at EPA and in this body prove that. So, what the GAO did here was not unprecedented. What was unprecedented was for the House EPA to send over a document claiming, falsely according to the Parliamentarian, that the waiver is in fact a rule under the CRA.  And to blame the GAO or the Parliamentarian for that is to mistake the referee for the player who committed the foul. The foul here is pretending that a waiver is a rule, and both the GAO and the Parliamentarian independently blew the whistle on that foul. Those are the facts.”

Republicans are moving full steam ahead to overrule the Senate Parliamentarian’s decision regarding California’s clean air waivers—which allow the state to implement more protective pollution standards for cars and trucks—effectively ending the filibuster. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has determined not once, but twice, that California’s Clean Air Act waivers are not rules under the Congressional Review Act (CRA), and the Senate Parliamentarian affirmed that any CRA resolutions on this subject would therefore require 60 votes to secure Senate passage.  Overruling the Parliamentarian and bypassing the filibuster amounts to going nuclear, and Republicans brought it to the floor today.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Senators Whitehouse and Alex Padilla (D-CA), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, took to the Senate Floor yesterday evening to ask a series of parliamentary inquiries about Senate Republicans’ intention to go nuclear.  Senate Democrats confirmed—on the congressional record—that the Republicans moving forward would be against the Parliamentarian’s guidance, and thus, the very definition of eliminating the filibuster.