U.S. Senator James Lankford and Senate Rules and Administration Committee Chairman Roy Blunt introduced legislation to free up the log jam of Senate confirmations of nominees. The Senate is dealing with a major backlog of nominees since it changed rules forcing 30 hours of debate on nominees. Lankford and Blunt want to shorten debate time to two hours for most nominees, but will keep the 30 hours of debate on high level nominees.
“In the last two years, the confirmation process has been mired in unprecedented political stall tactics,” said Lankford. “The Senate nomination process needs to function efficiently again. Presidents, regardless of their party, should be able to pick their staff. It’s the Senate’s role to ensure nominees are capable and qualified; we have a responsibility to provide advice and consent. Needless obstruction of that process is a failure of our duty. This resolution would permanently reduce post-cloture debate time for most nominations and allow the Senate to fulfill a primary constitutional duty of advice and consent. It is time to update the Senate rules so the nomination process can function appropriately again.”
“The president deserves to have his team in place, regardless of whether or not one party agrees with the election results,” said Blunt. “Instead, Senate Democrats spent the first two years of the Trump administration dragging out the confirmation process to not only deny the president his team, but also to waste hours of floor time that should have been spent focusing on the American people’s priorities. Over and over again, Senate Democrats have demanded cloture votes only to spend little to no time debating the nominees, many of whom were ultimately confirmed with overwhelming bipartisan support. This has been nothing more than obstruction for the sake of obstruction and it is outrageous. This resolution will get the Senate back to functioning as it should under the Constitution – in its role of advice and consent.”
Rules changes allowed for Senators to file for a cloture vote on nominees. So far, cloture was filed on 148 of President Trump’s nominees in the 115th Congress. The Senate held 127 cloture votes.
You can read Lankford and Blunt’s resolution here.
