It has become glaringly apparent that the latest Democrat tactic to thwart President Donald Trump’s agenda is to slow-walk his nominees and fight their confirmation at every step.
Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-WY) warned in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Tuesday that Republicans will have to change the Senate rules to prevent this obstruction if Democrats don’t end it themselves, and soon.
“Confirming even the most routine nominees is now a bitter fight. It is time to change Senate confirmation rules,” Barrasso wrote. “Through dilatory warfare, Democrats have broken their ‘advice and consent’ responsibilities. This drastic a slow-roll has never happened under a modern president.”
But according to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), turnabout is fair play.
Turnabout?
“I don’t recall this hysteria from John when Mitch stole a Supreme Court Justice,” Schumer posted, referring to Senate Republicans’ refusal to allow the confirmation of then-President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nomination of Merrick Garland.
On the surface, Schumer seems to have a point.
Digging deeper, however, there is a difference between preventing a lame duck president from getting his choice of a Supreme Court justice and leaving 145 pending nominees hanging, many of them for months.
There are 40 nominees Democrats have subjected to multiple roll call votes, something that has never been done before in the Senate by either party.
“Used to take seconds”
“These confirmations used to take seconds. Now, each can take days,” Barrasso wrote.
Not one of Trump’s nominees has been approved by unanimous consent voice vote, whereas over half of previous Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden’s nominees were confirmed this way.
“For decades, noncontroversial nominees moved through the Senate in a timely manner,” Barrasso wrote. “Democrats destroyed this tradition by treating every Trump nominee as controversial.”
It’s more than time for the GOP to change the rules and stop Schumer and his cronies from getting away with this nonsense.
One thing they could do is limit debate time, which would prevent Democrats from using a series of procedural votes to drag each confirmation process out for days.
Republicans can easily do so with a simple majority vote, and they should. Trump’s nominees have important work to do, and enough time has already been wasted.
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Author: Jen Krausz
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