The Senate is set to vote on a motion that would reduce floor debate on most federal nominations from 30 hours down to just two – a motion that Democrats will likely try to filibuster. In an op-ed for Politico this week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell laid out his reasons for wanting to get the motion passed.
In it, he accused the Democrats of engaging in “historic obstruction” that had left many of President Donald Trump’s nominees languishing in Senate purgatory for hundreds of days. McConnell said that these partisan delays have denied the American people the government they voted for, hindered Trump’s ability to build a smooth administration, and served no purpose other than to give Democrats something to squawk about to their constituents back home.
“It took six months of partisan delays — and several railroad accidents — before Democrats let the Senate confirm a federal railroad administrator, even though none of them actually voted against the nominee in the end,” McConnell wrote.
“It’s been 354 days and counting in Senate purgatory for the president’s nominee to head the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration,” he continued. “Two-hundred eighty-seven days and counting for the under secretary of state for management. Noncontroversial lower court nominees have languished for weeks and weeks — for no discernible reason — before they, too, were confirmed unanimously. These are just a few examples of the historic obstruction Senate Democrats have visited upon President Trump’s nominees for two years and counting.”
Since Trump took office, Senate Democrats have treated their responsibility as though it were to be a leverage point for the social media-driven “Resistance” among the leftist base. No longer concerned with any semblance of governing, the Democrats under Chuck Schumer have embraced every logjam loophole they can find to keep Trump from being a successful president. Their hope is that they can stall many of his Executive and Judicial Branch nominees for so long that they will literally spend his entire first term in waiting. At that point, the hope is that they can replace him with a Democratic president who will wipe the slate clean and put some respectable liberals in those unfilled spots.
McConnell said that the American people are unaware of just how unprecedented the obstruction really is:
Across the first two years of each of the six presidents preceding President Trump, the Senate only had to hold 24 total cloture votes on nominations. That’s the once-rare procedural step that unlocks an up-or-down confirmation vote even though a minority has sought to block it.
And in President Trump’s first two years? We had to hold a stunning 128 cloture votes to advance nominations. Our Democratic colleagues made the Senate jump over five times as many hurdles as in the equivalent periods in the Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations combined.
If Democrats block the maneuver to reduce debate time after a cloture vote has been called, McConnell will be left with two choices: Either continue to let these obstructionists block every Trump nominee with their endless stalling…or invoke the nuclear option and take away the Democrats’ filibuster tool in regards to procedural votes. McConnell is notoriously reluctant to take measures that erode Senate traditions and increase hostility between the two parties, but the Democrats have left him with few good options.
It’s time to do what is necessary and right for the good of the country.
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