Business in the House has come to a premature halt due to the negligent handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case, but the Senate is scheduled to keep working for at least one more week. Even so, Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) should threaten to stay longer, canceling some if not all of the August recess to get a backlog of work done.
Just 96 of President Donald Trump’s nominees have been confirmed, and another 136 are languishing, waiting for senators to take a final vote. Because Senate Democrats unilaterally changed Senate rules in 2013, only 50 votes are now needed to advance nominees through the Senate, as opposed to the 60 still required to approve legislation.
But although nominees can advance with just 50 votes, Senate rules still impose time requirements that the majority must adhere to if even just one senator mounts a challenge. After the majority leader has filed cloture on a nominee, without unanimous consent to waive the rules, it takes 26 hours for each confirmation vote to ripen. With 136 nominees pending, there is no way Thune could confirm all of them even if the Senate canceled the August recess entirely.
Until recently, it was rare for every nominee to require a cloture vote. The Senate is a bit like Calvinball; the rules can be suspended and completely rewritten at any moment as long as there is unanimous consent among all senators. Historically, this is how most executive nominees have been confirmed, with the majority and minority leaders cutting a deal to vote on slates of dozens of nominees at a time.
Unfortunately, for the first time ever, Senate Democrats have not agreed to a single Trump nominee through the unanimous consent process. They have forced Republicans to go through cloture on everyone, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was eventually confirmed 99-0. It is another of the Democratic Party’s tactics simply to obstruct everything Trump tries to do.
Thune has said he is open to canceling the August recess to work on Trump nominees, but he should be more forceful with his language. He told reporters this week, “We’re thinking about it,” after Trump asked the Senate to keep working. He added, “We want to get as many noms through the pipeline as we can. And honestly, it’d be nice to have Democrats who actually would kind of act more according to historical precedents when it comes to this.”
Other Republicans have sounded weaker.
“We’ve got to go back and be able to talk to our constituents and explain to them what we just did in a way that will help in the midterm elections, which I know the president and we all care about,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) said of the recent passage of Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill.” “This would be one time when we would be back home and be able to do that.”
Others were even more strongly opposed.
“You get us for the rest of the year back here, but there’s got to be some time when we can actually be addressing the needs of our constituents back home,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said of canceling the August recess. “I do not believe we need to cancel the August recess,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) added. “Please wipe that suggestion off of your DNA.”
More conservative senators such as Sens. Roger Marshall (R-KS) and Mike Lee (R-UT) have been much more supportive of staying in town to get the nominees done. Lee noted that without Trump’s nominees, “we risk extending rule by the leftist Deep State.” Marshall has noted that with tele-townhalls, senators should be able to sell the “one big, beautiful bill” from Washington.
The Senate has had a grueling schedule so far this year, including a month more of floor time than the House and four overnight vote-a-rama sessions. Many senators are tired and eager to get home.
But this is all the more incentive for Thune to play hardball with Democrats. The goal isn’t to pass a nominee every day now through September; the goal should be to tire Democrats until they agree to pass large slates of nominees, which is how both parties operated in the past.
RUSSIAGATE MASTERMIND JOHN BRENNAN MUST BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE
Democrats have every right to demand roll call votes on high-profile, controversial nominees such as Michael Waltz to be United Nations ambassador and Jeffrey Bornstein to be chief financial officer of the Defense Department, not to mention Trump’s two National Labor Relations Board nominees, who would give Republicans control of the agency. But there are many other nominees who are uncontroversial and should be ushered through en masse.
Trump should not have to wait this long to get the people he needs to run the federal government in place. Thune and his Senate Republicans should work as a team and force Democrats to stop their obstruction and approve more nominees.