Senate Goes Nuclear, Confirms 48
AP (“Senate confirms 48 of Trump’s nominees at once after changing the chamber’s rules“):
The Senate has confirmed 48 of President Donald Trump’s nominees at once, voting for the first time under new rules to begin clearing a backlog of executive branch positions that had been delayed by Democrats.
Frustrated by the stalling tactics, Senate Republicans moved last week to make it easier to confirm large groups of lower-level, non-judicial nominations. Democrats had forced multiple votes on almost every one of Trump’s picks, infuriating the president and tying up the Senate floor.
The new rules allow Senate Republicans to move multiple nominees with a simple majority vote — a process that would have previously been blocked with just one objection. The rules don’t apply to judicial nominations or high-level Cabinet posts.
“Republicans have fixed a broken process,” Thune said ahead of the vote.
The Senate voted 51-47 to confirm the four dozen nominees. Thune said that those confirmed on Thursday had all received bipartisan votes in committee, including deputy secretaries for the Departments of Defense, Interior, Energy and others.
[…]
Thune’s move is the latest salvo after a dozen years of gradual changes by both parties to weaken the filibuster and make the nominations process more partisan. Both parties have obstructed each other’s nominees for years, and senators in both parties have advocated for speeding up the process when they are in the majority.
Republicans first proposed changing the rules in early August, when the Senate left for a monthlong recess after a breakdown in bipartisan negotiations over the confirmation process and Trump told Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer to “GO TO HELL!” on social media.
Democrats have blocked more nominees than ever before as they have struggled to find ways to oppose Trump and the GOP-dominated Congress, and as their voters have pushed them to fight Republicans at every turn. It’s the first time in recent history that the minority party hasn’t allowed at least some quick confirmations.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has said Democrats are delaying the nominations because Trump’s nominees are “historically bad.” And he told Republicans that they will “come to regret” their action — echoing a similar warning from GOP Leader Mitch McConnell to then-Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., in 2013, when Democrats changed Senate rules for executive branch and lower court judicial nominees to remove the 60-vote threshold for confirmations. At the time, Republicans were blocking President Barack Obama’s picks.
Republicans took the Senate majority a year later, and McConnell eventually did the same for Supreme Court nominees in 2017 as Democrats tried to block Trump’s nomination of Justice Neil Gorsuch.
“What Republicans have done is chip away at the Senate even more, to give Donald Trump more power and to rubber stamp whomever he wants, whenever he wants them, no questions asked,” Schumer said last week.
Republicans will move to confirm a second tranche of nominees in the coming weeks, gradually clearing the list of more than 100 nominations that have been pending for months.
“There will be more to come,” Thune said Thursday. “And we’ll ensure that President Trump’s administration is filled at a pace that looks more like those of his predecessors.”
While I’m more sympathetic to the filibuster than my co-blogger Steven Taylor, I’ve long thought it made no sense in the case of nominees, particularly for the Executive. As a general rule, Presidents should be entitled to have policymakers of their choosing, so long as they’re fit for the office. Ordinarily, I’d say clearing the 51-vote threshold is sufficient advice and consent from the Senate.
Of course, near lockstep partisan voting has changed that calculus somewhat. There has been zero indication that Republican Senators will vote against a Trump nominee, no matter how great their concerns over qualifications and temperament.
Still, we’re eight months into Trump’s second term. It’s just absurd that he hasn’t been able to fill his senior team by now.
In terms of organizational design, the problem is that we require congressional approval for way too many slots. In terms of good government the problem is that Trump has been able to fill as many slots as he has.
The procedural filibuster protects the American people from the consequences of our electoral decisions. It needs to go. The talking filibuster could be kept as a compromise.
I hope Thune and Trump nuke it, since there always seems to be (at least) handful of Dems too scared, naïve, or comfortable to do it.
If the Senate itself were even close to representing the will of the people, then I’d agree with this sentiment, but part of the power of the filibuster is that it helps overcome the minority-rule-forward stance of the Senate. Just 60% of American citizens collectively hold 92% of the Senate seats – so rural, conservative areas have far too much power there.
The filibuster was just a tiny check on that overwelming minority rule.
@DK:
That. The talking filibuster was an occasional problem on issues the filibusters (filibusterers? I believe the archaic usage was filibusters) thought important, usually halting civil rights for Blacks. Now it’s an everyday thing with media reporting X failed 55 to 42 without noting the 55 were for it.
IIRC the filibuster arose as an unintended consequence of Aaron Burr’s effort to clean up the Senate rule book. And the procedural filibuster is an unintended consequence of an effort to minimize the nuisance of filibusters.
I’d be in favor of eliminating the filibuster. But, as with many things, current circumstances need to be taken into account.
FWIW, I am sympathetic to the notion that there are far too many positions that require Senate confirmation and would be open to changes I T arena.
But I also find the notion of approving 48 at once to utterly strain credulity on the concept of “advise and consent.”
The Senate is not a democratic body. As far as I’m concerned we should do to it what the UK did to the House of Lords … strip it of all their power. Let them continue to do confirmations, let them vote on legislation, but that vote is non-binding. Let them do proclamations and all the ceremonial stuff and conduct investigations. They can also do impeachment trials but reworked so that all they do is supply the prosecution and defense, but the trails would be adjudicated by a panel of Federal Judges selected at random from all levels of the federal judiciary and use normal trial procedures.
All of this should be done in tandem with doubling the size of the house.
James: “Still, we’re eight months into Trump’s second term. It’s just absurd that he hasn’t been able to fill his senior team by now.”
That’s the least absurd thing about this administration.