Senate Republicans are slamming Democrats for changing their tune on speeding up the confirmation process as the GOP conference forges ahead with a change to the upper chamber’s rules to clear a backlog of President Donald Trump’s nominees.
Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso will deliver a floor speech on Wednesday highlighting Senate Democrats’ apparent hypocrisy in light of Democrats’ likely unified resistance to the rules change. The second-ranking Senate Republican is expected to hammer the Democratic Caucus for abandoning their support for a Biden-era proposal that would have sped up the confirmation process while mounting an unprecedented blockade of Trump’s nominees, according to an excerpt of Barrasso’s remarks obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“You demanded change at a time when 62 percent of Biden’s nominees were confirmed by voice vote,” Barrasso is expected to say to his Democratic colleagues on the floor. “Yet you now reject the very changes you once championed now that a different president is getting zero nominees confirmed by voice vote or unanimous consent. The hypocrisy is undeniable.”
Barrasso’s remarks come after Democrats blocked a unanimous consent request from Republican Texas Sen. John Cornyn on Tuesday to pass a resolution allowing for the simultaneous confirmation of up to ten nominees who pass out of the same committee, rather than voting on each pick individually.
The resolution was previously introduced by Democratic Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Independent Maine Sen. Angus King in 2023 in response to some Biden nominees being held up by Senate Republicans. Barrasso is expected to criticize Democrats for objecting to the same change in the rules that the caucus proposed just two years earlier.
“Sen. Klobuchar said in 2023 grouping together nominees was vital for our ‘national security, economic success, and more.’ She was right,” Barrasso is expected to say on the Senate floor. “Yet yesterday, Democrats opposed their own proposal. In the words of former presidential candidate John Kerry, they were for it before they were against it.”
The Wyoming Republican will also illustrate how Democrats’ delay tactics are far more comprehensive than instances of Republicans stonewalling Biden appointees.
“Because of Democrat delay tactics, roughly 150 qualified nominees are still waiting for Senate confirmation,” Barrasso is expected to add. “In 2023, when Klobuchar-King [the resolution] was introduced, that number was 81. Twice as many nominees are stuck in Senate limbo today. That is the Schumer Confirmation Shutdown.”
Fifty-seven percent of Biden’s nominees were approved by voice vote or unanimous consent during his term. Senate Democrats, conversely, have not allowed a single Trump nominee to be swiftly confirmed in the president’s second term — even for noncontroversial nominees who secured bipartisan support at the committee level.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune kicked off the first procedural step to reforming Senate rules on Monday to allow for the swift confirmation of lower-level executive branch nominees and ambassadors. The process is expected to continue into next week due to a complex series of floor votes that accompany a change in Senate precedent.
Senate Republicans have rolled out a first tranche of 48 stalled Trump nominees who will be swiftly confirmed following the rules change. More nomination packages are expected to follow.
The GOP majority has invoked the Klobuchar-King proposal as inspiration for their rules change proposal. However, Republicans note their proposed reform is less extensive by exempting lifetime judicial appointments.
Thune has also highlighted Democrats’ sudden reversal on reforming the upper chamber’s rules. The lead Republican penned an op-ed for Breitbart on Monday using a 2022 quote from Schumer calling for confirming Biden’s picks without delay.
“Democrats can’t stand the fact that President Trump was elected. And so they’ve destroyed decades upon decades of Senate precedent and turned a historically bipartisan process into an exercise in petty partisanship,” Thune said on the Senate floor on Monday.
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