Senate Majority Leader John Thune wants GOP voters to believe that Senate Republicans have no ability to speed up confirmation of the more than 140 Trump nominees languishing in the upper chamber. But that isn’t entirely true.
After returning from Congress’s month-long August vacation, Thune took to the Senate floor on Tuesday to pin the blame for the continued confirmation delay of the president’s appointees squarely on the shoulders of Senate Democrats. Verbally wagging his finger at his leftist colleagues, the majority leader said that “their historic obstruction cannot continue.”
“All it takes is a little behavioral change and a willingness to acknowledge President Trump won an election, the American people voted for him, and they expect him to be able to populate his administration with the people that he wants to serve in many of these positions,” Thune said. “The Democrats can play ball — the way every Democrat and Republican Senate have, going back as far as we can find in the annals of history — or things are going to have to change around here. It’s as simple as that. And the ball, I would say, Mr. President, is in the Democrats’ court.”
Except, the ball is not in Democrats’ court — it’s in Thune’s. Contrary to his persistent narrative about Democrat obstruction, the Senate majority leader has always possessed the power to hold the upper chamber in session until confirmation of Trump’s nominees are complete.
During a recent interview on the American Moment’s Moment of Truth podcast, The Federalist’s Rachel Bovard explained the Senate confirmation process for executive nominees and how Thune and Senate Republicans have “stepped off the gas on nominations in particular.”
“Most of the nominees confirmed in the Senate are now what we call two-hour nominees. So you invoke cloture at 51 votes, you only have to run two hours of debate, and then you can confirm them two hours later,” Bovard said. “[Senate Republicans] have left approximately 140 civilian nominations lingering on the Senate’s executive calendar … a lot of [whom are] tasked with actually getting the president’s agenda done.”
Bovard went on to detail how senators “hate” having to be on the Senate floor “working,” and that they “still don’t even work five days a week.” Between the time they “fly in Monday night” to when they leave on Thursday, The Federalist’s senior tech columnist said, “They maybe take a handful of [nomination] votes in that process.”
“You could keep August [recess] on the table if you could just commit to showing up and working 9:00 to 5:00, five days a week, and just confirming noms during that time. … You could really start churning through this calendar if you just committed to doing it. But we have not seen that level of commitment from Senate Republicans at any point outside of … the cabinet,” Bovard said.
Bovard explained how the buck ultimately stops with Thune, who could easily speed up the confirmation process if he chose to do so.
“All that has to happen here is the majority leader, John Thune, has to go to the floor and file cloture on these nominations. He can do one at a time or he can file on 10 of them at a time. Cloture lies over for a day. It’s called the ‘intervening day.’ And after the intervening day, cloture is ripe and these nominees can be voted on. That’s all it takes,” Bovard said. “Democrats can’t object to that process. Democrats have no role in that process. Then the votes are on the floor.”
While Thune has used this process to confirm a few nominees at a time, the majority leader has thus far refused to fully embrace the powers of the majority to pressure Democrats into a consent deal that’s allowed large blocks of appointees to be confirmed quickly. Rather than force senators to be on the floor confirming these nominees one after another, Bovard noted, Thune has maintained the Senate’s slow-as-molasses confirmation schedule, leading to the current backlog of pending nominations.
“What I think a lot of us wanted to see [ahead of the August recess] was Thune saying [to Democrats], ‘Oh, really? Fine. You don’t want to agree [to a consent deal], I am going to now file on 140 nominations, and we are staying in session until it’s done,’” Bovard said. “And then you start voting and … actually show that you’re serious and you just start churning through these noms, by nom 20 (because Senate Democrats are also governed by the same rule that governs Senate Republicans, which is they hate working) … Senate Democrats are gonna start screaming at [Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer to be like, ‘Cut a deal and get us out of here. We are dying.’”
“Thune has the upper hand here. … If he and his conference are actually willing to force them to vote … you could easily get it done in a month,” Bovard added.
Of course, the key phrase in Bovard’s remarks is “willing.” Like when it comes to fulfilling issue-based promises they campaign on, many Republican senators have shown little to no appetite for doing what’s necessary to get the president’s nominees across the finish line. And that’s especially true for Thune, who has seemingly recanted on his pledge — which he made a day after Trump’s inauguration — that Senate Republicans “are ready to work as long as needed to confirm President Trump’s nominees,” including “Nights. Weekends. Recesses.”
The bottom line is that Thune and the Senate GOP are not going to act out of the goodness of their hearts. It’s going to take vocal, consistent, and continued pressure from Trump and Republican voters to get them to actually do their jobs.