Senate Votes To Change Rules On Filibusters

The US Senate has voted to change its rules to allow executive and lower court nominees to be approved by a simple majority vote.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid invoked the move, known in Washington as the "nuclear option," to end what he considered long-standing abuses of blocking procedures that for more than two centuries have required a 60-vote threshold - instead of a simple majority vote - to overcome.

The so-called filibuster would remain intact for Supreme Court nominations and for all legislation.

On a nearly party-line vote of 52-48, Democrats changed the Senate's balance of power by reducing from 60 to 51 the number of votes needed to end procedural roadblocks known as filibusters against presidential nominees, except those for the US Supreme Court.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, led the charge on the rules change, accusing Republicans of obstructionism and saying the American public is right to believe that "Congress is broken".

Mr Reid said of the 168 filibusters against presidential nominees in US history, half were held against Obama's picks.

"It's time to change," Mr Reid said.

Mitch McConnell accused Democrats of trying to divert attention

President Barack Obama voiced his support of the move.

"I realise that neither party has been blameless for these (blocking) tactics. But today's pattern of obstruction just isn't normal. It's not what our founders envisioned. For the sake of future generations we can't let it become normal," he said.

"I support the steps a majority of senators took to change the way Washington is doing business."

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell insisted that there was no reason for a rule change, saying Republicans had confirmed the vast majority of Mr Obama's judicial nominees.

Mr McConnell also accused Democrats of taking the action to divert attention from the botched launch of Mr Obama's new healthcare law known as Obamacare.

"On this point, the similarities between the Obamacare debate and the Democrat threat" to change Senate rules "are inescapable," McConnell said just before the vote.

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