Senate Republicans begin to change rules to clear backlog of Trump nominees

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Monday he planned to begin “necessary procedural steps to amend the rules” so that Republicans could more quickly confirm President Trump’s nominees whom Democrats are universally filibustering.

Those steps began Monday evening when Mr. Thune, South Dakota Republican, filed an executive resolution to confirm as a block four dozen sub-Cabinet nominees who have been reported out of committee on a bipartisan basis, instead of holding individual votes on each one.  

The Senate will hold a procedural vote Thursday to tee up the resolution, and if Democrats block it, then Republicans will make their argument for the rules change.

Republicans’ proposal is to change the rules so that invoking cloture on a block of sub-Cabinet nominees only requires a single majority vote to end a filibuster, instead of 60.

The Senate rules already allow a simple majority vote to end a filibuster on each nominee individually. But the rules change would allow for those votes to be grouped together in batches, also known as en bloc votes.

Mr. Thune said the change is needed because Democrats refuse to provide unanimous consent to confirm batches of Mr. Trump’s nominees, except for military promotions.  

Democrats also won’t allow any individual civilian nominee, even ones with bipartisan support, to be confirmed by unanimous consent or voice vote – an unprecedented level of obstruction for any modern president, Republicans say.

“This isn’t about the quality of the candidates or any other substantive issue,” Mr. Thune said. “This is simply the world’s longest, most drawn-out temper tantrum over losing an election. Democrats can’t stand the fact that President Trump was elected.”

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, said he was “working in good faith” with Republicans on a bipartisan package of nominees in July before Mr. Trump pulled the plug at the last minute and told him to “go to hell.”

“Was there any backbone?” Mr. Schumer said of Senate Republicans. “Was there any strength to say to Trump, ‘We have an agreement; take a walk’? No way.”

“And so now rather than giving those talks another chance, Republicans would rather change how the Senate operates to weaken this chamber’s traditional and powerful sense of deliberation,” he said.

Mr. Thune told The Washington Times he’d be willing to restart negotiations on a package of nominations but not under the conditions Mr. Schumer presented in July, which the Republican called “extortion.”

“He basically wanted us to pay a ransom and contribute billions of dollars to their favorite programs in exchange to get nominees that we normally routinely got in the past,” he said. “That’s not a good outcome.”

Mr. Schumer said Mr. Trump’s nominees are “historically bad” and “will only get worse” if Republicans push through the rules change.

“Trump has made a mockery of the nominations process,” he said. “He lacks any sense of principle. He doesn’t care if the people he picks are qualified, if they’re liars, if they’re corrupt.”

Debating and voting on nominees individually allows some “degree of sunlight,” Mr. Schumer argued.

As of Monday evening, 149 civilian nominees had been reported out of committee and are awaiting floor votes. 

Dozens more were still awaiting committee action and Mr. Trump is expected to nominate hundreds more during his term.  

“So if Democrat obstruction continues – as Democrats have made abundantly clear that it will – there is no practical way that we could come close to filling all the vacancies in the four years of this administration, no matter how many hours the Senate works,” Mr. Thune said.

If Mr. Trump’s nominees were “historically bad,” as Democrats claim, they wouldn’t vote for several of them in committee or in final floor confirmation votes, he said, accusing Democrats of “petty partisanship.”

“Empty desks do not help the government function, and unnecessary delays rob a duly elected president of the team he needs to carry out his responsibilities,” Mr. Thune said.

The procedural steps needed for Republicans to solidify their rules change and confirm the first batch of Trump nominees are expected to drag into next week.

The rules change is expected to come via a simple majority vote to overturn the chair, referred to as the “nuclear option” since rules changes typically require a supermajority vote.

Both parties have deployed the nuclear option in recent years to make nominees easier to confirm.

Republicans said their current proposal is similar to a rules change Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota floated last Congress, when she chaired the Senate Rules and Administration Committee and President Biden was in the White House.

That measure would have allowed up to 10 nominees advanced out of the same committee to be considered en bloc. Her measure excluded positions like Cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court justices and appeals court judges, which Republicans say their rules change also would not touch.

Mr. Thune said the GOP proposal will allow for larger en bloc groups of nominees but is not as extensive as the Democratic proposal in the types of nominees covered.

“It only applies to nominees at the sub-Cabinet level – and not to Article III judicial nominees, as theirs did,” he said. “But the proposals share the same objective, and that is providing for confirming groups of nominees all together so the president can have his team in place and so the Senate can focus on the important legislative work in its charge.”