Senator Manchin: 60-Vote Rule Should Apply to Everything

Trump announced Judge Neil Gorsuch as his Supreme Court nominee late Tuesday, and while the decision was celebrated among conservatives, it has quickly become a source of distress within the Democratic Party.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), called Trump’s nominee a “hostile appointment,” while Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) expressed “very serious doubts” about Gorsuch’s record.

As the likelihood of attaining the necessary 60-vote majority in the Senate to confirm Gorsuch diminishes, Trump encouraged Senate Republicans to explore going “nuclear,” on Wednesday, an option opposed by West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin (D).

The “nuclear option” would allow Senate Republicans to overrule the Democrats with a simple majority vote of 51 votes.

“You have a situation now saying ‘well we’ll do the nuclear option now.’ If they do it now, it will be nuclear option forever. The Republicans and Democrats both have been around here long enough to understand whatever you do today might not be what you want tomorrow,” Manchin told the FOX Business Network’s Neil Cavuto.

He went on to explain why the nuclear option may actually create more Congressional gridlock.

“I would like to see the 60-vote rule apply to everything...It has to make us start working together. People will not stand for gridlock,” Manchin said.

Manchin also weighed in on Trump’s executive order to temporality ban refugees from seven predominately Muslim countries.

“The history on the ban goes back to 2011…[President Obama] did it for one country of Iraq and then looked and saw six other countries were not only harboring but promoting terrorism. And so they put it on the seven. And then President Trump, wisely picked up those same seven. That is how they come to being.”

However, he said the main difference between Trump and Obama’s policies is that while Trump’s order targets green card holders, Obama’s did not.