AFN reported previously on how Democrats in the Senate are stonewalling Trump’s sub-cabinet and ambassadorial nominees. Now within the first 200 days of his term, Trump simultaneously has more nominations in place than any other modern president and the longest average confirmation delay.
So far, Democrats have been stalling by evoking a 30-hour-rule on each of the nominees. This means that that Senate cannot consider a nominee until 30 hours, which is causing a backlog in the confirmations.
Senator Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) is preparing to invoke the “nuclear option” in order to get Trump’s nominees though the Senate backlog, reports Fox News. This option allows for a Senate rules change by majority vote, the Republicans having the Senate majority. This change would allow for the nominees to be voted on in groups instead of individually.
This is only being considered because Thune and Senate Minority Leader Church Schumer (D-New York) could not come to an agreement regarding the nominees before the Senate left for recess. This approach is not new, but it is rare.
Senator Steve Daines (R-Montana) spoke with Tony Perkins on Washington Watch. He says that never before has this kind of obstruction been seen in the history of the U.S. Senate.
“If you go back in the more recent history, in the last 20 to 30 years, typically more than 90% of nominees that come to the Senate are approved by a voice vote or unanimous consent. That's how you speed up some of these very slow and arguably archaic processes in the Senate,” informs Daines.
During Trump’s first administration, Daines says that Democratic obstruction led to the approval rate dropping to around 65%. The Republicans did the same during Biden’s administration, keeping the approval rate to about 60%.
However, this standard of unanimous votes did not extend to Trump’s second term.
“It's been 0% now since President Trump took office. Unprecedented. We are going to move forward with changing a precedent, which basically is a rule change that allows us to do this in block, in groups of 20, 30, 40, 50, upwards of 100 at one time,” says Daines.
This strategy was taken from the Democrats as they fought against the slow pace at which Republicans were admitting nominees during the Biden administration. Republicans are looking to expand from 10 the number of people in a group that can go to the floor for a vote.
Thune quoted Schumer by stating that the president, no matter his political affiliation, should have his administration quickly. Schumer used these words against the Republicans when they stalled Biden’s nominees.
“Assuming we prevail in this change, of course, in the next 10 days, I think we'll have all of President Trump's nominees cleared. The backlog of about 150 should be cleared by the end of the month,” said Daines.
