


Senate Republicans are actively exploring unilateral changes in Senate rules to speed confirmation of Trump administration nominees in the fall after they failed to break stiff Democratic resistance to executive branch picks before leaving on their August recess.
Senior Republicans say that talks are ongoing and that changes in confirmation procedure are likely in order to overcome Democratic insistence on holding formal roll call votes on every executive branch nominee. That requirement has slowed approval of President Trump’s picks for scores of top executive branch jobs.
“I think there are going to be rules changes, and whether they come by hard majority-only vote or whether we can find some by consensus is yet to be determined,” Senator Mike Rounds, Republican of South Dakota, said on Capitol Hill this week as he called the nominations standoff a “crisis.”
Among the changes under consideration are shortening the time required between a procedural vote and final vote on a nominee, eliminating some procedural votes and allowing groups of nominees to be confirmed as a bloc.
Republicans would also like to reduce the approximately 1,200 executive branch positions subject to confirmation after Democrats forced recorded votes on lower-level nominees who have traditionally been confirmed by voice vote or by unanimous consent.