Republicans moved Thursday to speed up Senate confirmation of President Donald Trump’s nominees by changing the chamber’s rules over the objections of Democrats.
Senators voted 53-45 to allow themselves to change the rules with a simple majorityinstead of 60 votes — a move known as the “nuclear option.”
The rules change will allow the Senate to confirm multiple people at once, helping to clear a backlog of nearly 150nominees awaiting floor votes. Republicans argue it is necessary because Democrats have held up the confirmation process by forcing time-consuming votes on each nominee rather than allowing some of them to be confirmed by voice votes, which is faster.
The change excludes Cabinet officials, Supreme Court justices and federal judges, who must be confirmed one by one.
“Democrats and their political base cannot deal with the fact that the American people elected President Trump,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) said Thursday on the Senate floor. “And so they’re dragging out every confirmation in retaliation.”
The rules change is the latest instance of the majority party using the nuclear option to make it easier to confirm nominees without the consent of the minority. Senate Democrats changed the rules in 2013 to allow most nominees to be confirmed with a simple majority rather than 60 votes. Senate Republicans did the same for Supreme Court nominees in 2017 when they held the majority. The also reduced debate time for most nominees in 2019.
Some Democrats said they agreed that the nominations process was broken. But they said they had stalled Trump’s nominees becausethey believe they are “historically bad.”
Democrats argued that they tried to negotiate with Republicans last month to confirm more nominees in exchange for the Trump administration releasing some funding that it had held up. But Trump torpedoed the deal, encouraging Republicans to go home for their summer break and telling Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) on social media to “GO TO HELL!”…