When we asked Reid’s office for their supporting evidence for the graphic, they pointed us to
two documents from the Congressional Research Service, the independent research arm of Congress. Collectively, the two documents list every instance in which a presidential nominee was blocked and cloture was attempted.
Looking over the documents, we found that the numbers were essentially right, but that the way the graphic described them was wrong.
The most recent of the two documents, a CRS memo, said, "In brief, out of the 168 cloture motions ever filed (or reconsidered) on nominations, 82 (49 percent) were cloture motions on nominations made since 2009."
This means that the numbers in the graphic -- 82 presidential nominees blocked under Obama and 86 nominees blocked previously -- were described incorrectly. The figures actually represent the number of cloture attempts that had been made, not the people who were nominated .
This matters because some of the nominations resulted in multiple cloture efforts. By our calculation, there were actually 68 individual nominees blocked prior to Obama taking office and 79 (so far) during Obama’s term, for a total of 147.
Reid’s point is actually a bit stronger using these these revised numbers. Using these figures, blockages under Obama actually accounted for more than half of the total, not less then half. Either way, it's disproportionate by historical standards.
Indeed, when we presented this finding to Reid’s office, they agreed and released an
updated version of the graphic. It now reads, "In the history of the United States, there have been 168 filibusters of presidential nominees, 82 filibusters under President Obama, 86 filibusters under all other presidents."
