No More Delays: Republicans Are Restoring the Senate

Last year, the American people gave President Trump a mandate. Like every president before him, President Trump needs a team to help enact his agenda. But unlike his predecessors, President Trump has had to face unprecedented obstruction from Senate Democrats in getting members of his administration confirmed quickly. Republicans are putting an end to Democrats’ antics to ensure the Senate can do its job and President Trump can have his administration at full strength. It takes more than 1,000 Senate-confirmed officials to fill a president’s administration. To get so many people on the job quickly, the Senate has historically bundled noncontroversial, lower-level nominees in batches and confirmed them by voice vote. But that’s not how things have gone this year. While previous presidents have had a majority of their nominees approved in this more efficient manner, President Trump is the first president on record not to have a single nominee confirmed this way. Because Democrats have refused to speed things up even for nominees who have bipartisan support, the Senate has had to consider all of President Trump’s nominees one at a time. That stops now. Republicans have taken steps to restore the Senate’s traditional confirmation process so we can get the rest of President Trump’s team in place. What we’ve done is simply codify in Senate rules what was once understood to be standard practice, and that is confirming lower-level nominees expeditiously in batches. It’s an idea that Democrats actually proposed themselves, and it’s a step toward both the Senate and executive branch working more efficiently for the American people. The status quo is simply untenable. The Senate has been in session longer and has taken more votes in the last eight months than any Senate has at this point since the 1980s. Yet, at our current pace, facing the same Democrat obstruction, there would still be hundreds of vacancies remaining when President Trump’s term ends. Not to mention the fact that the more time the Senate spends on nominations, the less time we have for working on legislation. Eight months of petty partisanship is long enough. Democrats have broken the confirmation process. Republicans are fixing it, and we’re ensuring that, in the future, duly elected presidents are able to get their teams in place without unnecessary and partisan delays so they, and the Senate, can fulfill their responsibilities to the American people.