Thanks to a Republican vote to stop California from setting its own auto emissions, Democrats can challenge virtually any Trump administration action, and eat up time on the Senate floor.
Thanks to a Republican vote to stop California from setting its own auto emissions, Democrats can challenge virtually any Trump administration action, and eat up time on the Senate floor.
Parliamentarians rule on all precedent including recent ones. Analogously, the threshold for filibustering cabinet nominees was only lowered to 51 in the early 2010s by simply overruling the decision of the chair. And you don’t even need a separate overrule motion to overrule the parliamentarian. You just have to not respond. 10 hours of required debate is 10 hours of required debate.
Fair point since rhe overrule would now be precedent. So, a republican objects since this is inappropriate, the parliamentarian deems that the precedent allows the Democratic motion, republicans overrule the parliamentarian, and the strategy is quashed.
Extra steps, sure, but since republicans don’t care about norms or hypocrisy, they wouldn’t even blink at such a move.
The only way that it works is if enough republicans don’t really want to pass the bill. Then, this might give them an out. It wouldn’t work otherwise.
That said, no reason not to make them do the extra work.