The Senate just voted by a 52-43 majority to end the GOP’s filibuster of Professor Goodwin Liu’s nomination to a federal appeal court — which, in the bizarro world that is the U.S. Senate, means that Liu’s nomination will not move forward. The vote was entirely along party lines, except that Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) voted “yea” and Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) voted “nay.”

Just six short years ago, Republicans sang a very different tune when it came to judicial filibusters. Senate Republicans almost unanimously declared filibusters of judicial nominees to be a horrific betrayal of their constitutional role. Many Republicans outright declared judicial filibusters to be unconstitutional. Here is a representative sample of how current GOP senators felt about such filibusters when a Republican was in the White House:

• Lamar Alexander (R-TN): “I would never filibuster any President’s judicial nominee, period. I might vote against them, but I will always see they came to a vote.”

• Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) and Johnny Isakson (R-GA): “Every judge nominated by this president or any president deserves an up-or-down vote. It’s the responsibility of the Senate. The Constitution requires it.”

• Tom Coburn (R-OK): “If you look at the Constitution, it says the president is to nominate these people, and the Senate is to advise and consent.  That means you got to have a vote if they come out of committee.  And that happened for 200 years.”

• John Cornyn (R-TX): “We have a Democratic leader defeated, in part, as I said, because I believe he was identified with this obstructionist practice, this unconstitutional use of the filibuster to deny the president his judicial nominations.

• Mike Crapo (R-ID): “Until this Congress, not one of the President’s nominees has been successfully filibustered in the Senate of the United States because of the understanding of the fact that the Constitution gives the President the right to a vote.”

• Chuck Grassley (R-IA): “It would be a real constitutional crisis if we up the confirmation of judges from 51 to 60, and that’s essentially what we’d be doing if the Democrats were going to filibuster.”

• Mitch McConnell (R-KY): “The Constitution of the United States is at stake.  Article II, Section 2 clearly provides that the President, and the President alone, nominates judges.  The Senate is empowered to give advice and consent.  But my Democratic colleagues want to change the rules.  They want to reinterpret the Constitution to require a supermajority for confirmation.”

Sadly, this willingness to declare something unconstitutional when it suits them and then pretend the Constitution says something else entirely when the political winds change is par for the GOP’s course. Republicans invented a previously unheard of constitutional objection to the Affordable Care Act, they’ve called everything from Social Security to Medicare to child labor laws unconstitutional, and they’ve even pretended that the Constitution allows them to strip Americans of their citizenship.

Sen. Nelson’s vote against Liu, however, is utterly inexplicable. When Bush was naming judges, Nelson voted to end cloture on Judge Janice Rogers Brown, a radical tenther who once compared liberalism to “slavery” and Social Security to a “socialist revolution.” It is impossible to imagine what standard Nelson applied that would keep a mainstream voice like Liu off the court, but allow Judge Brown to shape the law.

A few Senate Democrats — including Sens. Ben Nelson (D-NE), Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Evan Bayh (D-IN) — have come out against President Obama’s plan to extend the Bush tax cuts for the middle-class while allowing them to expire for the richest two percent of Americans (saving $830 billion in borrowing and spending). In fact, Nelson feels so strongly about extending the Bush tax cuts that he delivered a speech today at the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think-tank, arguing for “why we should not raise taxes in a weak economy.”

“I hate deficit spending, but some matters are so urgent that they can’t wait. Such was the case with the stimulus package, which contained more than $300 billion in tax relief, and I believe the same holds true about the expiring Bush era tax cuts,” Nelson has said. Heritage promoted the event by noting Nelson’s support for Bush’s tax cuts in the first place:

Since coming to the Senate in 2001, Nelson has played a key role in passing several major tax cuts, including providing the lynchpin of Democratic support for both the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush. In September, Nelson announced that he would again break ranks with his party and support the continuation of the 2001/2003 rates, noting that raising taxes in this economy could impair recovery and “hold back economic development across America.”

To his credit, Nelson did tout the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act as a success during the speech. But if Nelson’s worried about holding back development, he might want to take a look at the Congressional Budget Office’s work on the effects of the Bush tax cuts.

CBO has found that extending the Bush tax cuts are the least effective tax or spending step available for boosting the economy and that extending the entire Bush tax cut package permanently will actually decrease incomes and gross national product, due to the increased borrowing needed to pay for them. As The Wonk Room explained, Nelson has also suggested financing an extension of tax cuts for the rich by raising taxes on the middle class.

Nelson’s message went over well at Heritage, where fealty to Bush tax policies is paramount. But if Nelson truly believes in his policy prescription, then he should be willing to face a more skeptical audience. With that in mind, we’d like to extend an invitation to Nelson to come to the Center for American Progress and debate the Bush tax cuts anytime he’d like.

Last month, as the Senate was gridlocked by a Republican filibuster of a bill to extend much-needed unemployment benefits to millions of out-of-work Americans, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) stood with the GOP against the extension. Nelson claimed that his concerns about the deficit overrode his support for the extension; he voted against the bill that finally passed 60-40.

Later that week, Nelson came out in support of an extension — “for now” — of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, which adds many billions more to the deficit than the unemployment insurance extension. In fact, extending the Bush tax cuts for one year alone would add $115 billion to the deficit, compared to the “relatively tiny budgetary cost of $33 billion” for the extension of UI benefits.

Today, though, Ben Nelson provided further evidence that he is a deficit peacock — someone who claims to be concerned about the deficit but isn’t actually interested in taking serious steps toward a balanced budget. Before the final vote on the states’ aid bill that passed today, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) offered two amendments that would, in effect, permanently extend the Bush tax cuts. David Dayen has the results:

Before passing the state fiscal aid bill, Democrats actually gave Jim DeMint two votes on tax rates. He wanted to add massively to the deficit – literally trillions of dollars – by freezing in place the tax rates on individuals and “small businesses” that we have now, and which make us one of the most lightly-taxed industrialized nations on the planet. And look at this: Democrats rejected the measure entirely. On both votes, only Ben Nelson [and Sen. Blanche Lincoln (AR)] crossed the aisle to vote with all Republicans [except deficit hawk George Voinovich (OH)]

Nelson and Lincoln (who also claims to be concerned about deficits) apparently don’t mind spending $3.1 trillion over the next ten years to pursue ineffective tax cuts for the wealthy. Perhaps they should have listened to their colleague, Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), who said of DeMint’s proposal, “that’s not serious. Is that a stunt? Yes, it’s a stunt. Is it a gimmick? Yes, it’s a gimmick. Is it serious? No, it’s not serious.”

DeMint is particularly “not serious” when it comes to paying for his extraordinarily expensive amendments. Both came “with instructions to offset as necessary through spending reduction,” Senate-speak for “we’ll worry about the cost later.”

– Charlie Eisenhood

Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.

Before Congress ajourned for recess, the U.S. Senate failed to extend unemployment benefits for millions of Americans due to a united filibuster by Republican senators joined by Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson (NE).

Despite the fact that the unemployment rate is at a high 9.5 percent and that the benefits are the only source of income for many of those unable to find work, conservatives have demanded that spending on the benefits be offset before they vote for them (a demand they do not make for tax breaks for mulitmillionaires). In a statement explaining his decision to join conservatives to filibuster the extension, Nelson cited the relatively tiny deficit impact of extending them:

“Recently, Nebraska state officials estimated that our unemployment had improved slightly and was down to 4.9 percent. I am very sympathetic to the many Nebraskans who remain out of work and recognize that the federal government should extend unemployment benefits to help them. Before the vote last week on the tax extenders bill, which provided unemployment benefits, I informed Senate leadership that I was willing to vote for new spending as long as it is paid for. I believe this can be done and that the votes are there to pass it. The bill has been revised several times already and each time the deficit spending was less. Tough choices are possible and necessary to not add to the deficit. [...] So, Congress should provide additional unemployment benefits but not as a bailout to the states that worsens the deficit and passes the bills onto our children.”

Yet today, the Washington Post reveals a new poll that finds that the overwhelming majority of Americans support extending unemployment benefits, even in the face of concerns of opponents who say it “adds too much to the federal budget deficit”:

The poll also finds that 57 percent of self-identified “moderate or liberal” Republicans support extending benefits. If Congress fails to extend benefits, it will — by the end of the week — “bring the total number of long-term unemployed prematurely cut off from aid to 2.5 million.” Considering the public’s views on the issue, Nelson should reconsider his stance.