(Left to right) Sen. Chuck Schumer, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Sen. Dick Durbin speak to the media after Senate joint caucus meeting, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, DC.

Reuters/Washington

Democrats in the US Senate backed away yesterday from a potentially historic crackdown on filibusters in exchange for a Republican agreement to stop using them to block some long-stalled nominations made by President Barack Obama.

While the deal was not final yesterday afternoon, both sides were optimistic they would reach an agreement to avert a bitter showdown over the procedural tactic used for years by minority parties to block decisions by the party in control of the Senate.

The first concrete sign of agreement came when the Senate, on a vote of 71-29, with 17 Republicans joining all 52 Democrats and two independents, cleared the way for an up-or-down vote on Obama’s choice of Richard Cordray to serve as director of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection.

Cordray was expected to be easily confirmed, ending Republican vows to oppose him until structural changes were made in the agency that was created in 2011 to crack down on Wall Street abuses.

Obama is also expected to win approval of other key nominees to his second-term team, including the heads of the Labor Department and Environmental Protection Agency.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had threatened to invoke an unprecedented change to chamber rules to end Republicans power to filibuster such executive-branch picks, unless Cordray and six other pending Obama nominees were confirmed.

Under the tentative agreement, Reid would yield to Republican calls that Obama withdraw two nominees to the National Labor Relations Board and offer new ones.

The new ones would be picked with the help of organised labour, a traditional ally of Democrats, and Republicans would agree to confirm them by Aug 1, congressional aides said.

“These two nominees will be even more liberal than the current ones,” a senior Democratic aide said.

But Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has not yet signed off on the specifics of the deal, his office said.

Republicans have opposed NLRB nominees Sharon Block and Richard Griffin, whose temporary appointments to the board by Obama were invalidated by the federal courts. The case is now on appeal to the US Supreme Court.

Other nominees set to be voted on are: Fred Hochberg to be president of the US Export-Import Bank; Thomas Perez to be labour secretary, and Gina McCarthy to be head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Republican Senator John McCain and Democratic Senator Charles Schumer, who crafted a landmark immigration bill this year, came together again to find a compromise on nominations.

Their talks intensified following a closed-door meeting attended by all 100 senators on Monday night where differences were aired and members of both sides spoke out against changing the rules on filibusters.

“We came to an agreement that we shouldn’t change the rules but we should let the agencies function,” Schumer said.

“I am hopeful that this would set a better tone not just for the seven on the list here, but for all future appointments,” Schumer said.

Filibusters have long been a central tool in the Senate to permit the minority to extend debate and pressure the majority to compromise.

But in recent years, each side, when in the majority, has accused the minority of using the filibuster to create partisan gridlock rather than to find bipartisan solutions.

Without an agreement, Democrats have said their aim would be to reduce to 51 from the current 60 the number of votes needed to end filibusters against executive branch nominees. The party controls the Senate by 54-46.

Normally 67 votes are needed to change Senate rules, but Democrats could do it with just 51 under the nuclear option, which would involve a ruling by the Democratic chair.