The Senate majority leader, exasperated by Senate Republicans’ serial stalling tactics, on Thursday proposed new rules for confirming Cabinet nominees. Under the proposal, a majority of senators, not the extraordinary 60 needed now, could confirm the president’s picks. Sen. Bernie Sanders supports the change. He would go further and extend the majority-rule principle to bills before the Senate. Legislation to lower student loan interest rates got 51 votes on Wednesday, for example, but it fell nine short of the supermajority needed to overcome the parliamentary roadblock that Republicans erected.  “Enough is enough,” Sanders told Thom Hartmann Friday on his weekly radio and Internet program. Also on Capitol Hill during the past week, Sanders and others pressed the White House to do more on global warming. And on Wednesday, a Senate panel advanced legislation to outlaw discrimination by employers against gays, a proposal Sanders first cosponsored in the House nearly a decade ago.

Tyranny of the Minority Under Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s proposal, a majority of senators, 51 instead of the current 60, could shut off debate over nominations for the Cabinet and other senior executive branch positions. What brought the issue to a head were the long-stalled nominations of candidates to be the Department of Labor secretary and EPA administrator. Republicans also have dragged out the confirmation of a chairman for a new consumer bureau, which they opposed creating in the first place, and a board that enforces workplace laws, which they don’t like. Supporting the rules change, Sanders said that “with rare exceptions, a president should have the right to appoint his team to implement the policies he was elected to carry out.” He would go further. Senators should have all the time they want to speak their minds, but then a majority should be able to pass legislation, he said. “This country faces major crises. The American people want us to act to address unemployment and the economy. They want us to deal with the global warming, health care, campaign finance reform, education, crumbling infrastructure and the deficit. But in my view, none of these problems will be effectively addressed so long as a single senator may demand 60 votes to pass legislation,” Sanders said. “Time after time after time we have a majority of votes to do something but we can’t get 60 votes because Republicans are using the filibuster in an unprecedented way,” Sanders said on Friday on KNX-AM radio in Los Angeles. Listen to the interview.

Student Loans A filibuster by Senate Republicans blocked consideration on Wednesday of a bill to lower student loan interest rates that doubled as of July 1. “I have heard from more than 700 Vermonters and people around the country that college costs too much and interest rates on student loans are too high. Plans for careers and families have been put on hold. The economy is being hurt. We must continue working to find a short-term solution to keep interest rates down while developing a long-term solution to make college more affordable for working families,” Bernie said. Listen to a Joel Heitkamp radio interview.

A Fair Tax System Skeptical of a bid by corporate-friendly congressional tax writers to redo the tax code, Bernie laid out specific proposals of his own to raise revenue by closing loopholes that let corporations evade taxes. “At a time when corporations in America are enjoying record profits and one out of four major corporations pay no federal income taxes, we need a fundamental rewrite of corporate tax law. Corporations in America and the wealthy need to pay their fair share of taxes so we can protect the most vulnerable among us, create jobs, and deal with the deficit,” Sanders said. Read Sanders’ detailed proposal.

Global Warming Will global warming make intense storms stronger and more frequent? Yes, according to a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. There will be as many as 20 additional hurricanes, cyclones and tropical storms each year by the end of the century, according to the study by climate researcher Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Meanwhile, key senators met Tuesday with the top White House adviser on climate change. Sanders said afterward that the administration should be bolder. “When you have a planetary crisis, of course you don’t build the Keystone oil pipeline, of course you support a tax on carbon and of course you back a major investment in energy efficiency.” Read more in USA Today about the latest scientific findings on climate change. Read more about the meeting with the White House official. Read about Sanders’ legislation to tax carbon and methane gas emissions that cause global warming.

Workplace Discrimination The Senate labor committee on Wednesday approved the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. It would outlaw discrimination in workplaces on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Bernie first cosponsored the bill in 1994 as a member of the House of Representatives. He was one of 54 senators to cosponsor the version that cleared the Senate committee on Wednesday. Vermont, a national leader in gay rights, has banned discrimination based on sexual orientation since 1992.

Health Care Americans born in 2010 could expect to live 78.2 years, up from 75.2 years in 1990, but that ranked 27th among the 34 nations considered its economic peers, according to a new study. “The United States spends more than the rest of the world on health care and leads the world in the quality and quantity of its health research, but that doesn’t add up to better health outcomes,” Christopher J.L. Murray, director of the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, and one of the study’s lead authors told The Washington Post. Read the article. Read the study.