In a desperate effort to preserve the filibuster for presidential nominees, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell announced this morning that Obama’s controversial nominees, Tom Perez for Labor secretary and Gina McCarthy for Environmental Protection Agency administrator, both had enough Republican votes to overcome the filibuster.

“Democrats … have yet to schedule votes on McCarthy and Perez, despite the fact that both of these highly controversial nominees already have enough votes to clear a 60-vote hurdle,” McConnell said in a speech on the Senate floor.

Senate majority leader Harry Reid has suggested that he would be willing to support the nuclear option on Obama nominees, and end senators’ ability to filibuster a nominee. If no filibuster is permitted, a nominee would only need 51 votes to be confirmed.

McConnell said he did not plan to vote for McCarthy or Perez, who he described as “a far-left ideologue whose record of bending the rules to achieve his ends.”

Republicans, however, do not intend to confirm the NRLB nominees that Obama appointed in 2009 when the Senate was out of session. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the Obama administration on the matter earlier this year, and the case is headed to the Supreme Court.

Reid has been under pressure from labor supporters to end senators’ abilities to filibuster nominees so that these NRLB nominees would be confirmed.