Republicans to Change Senate Rules to Stop Democrat Obstruction of Trump Nominees

Breitbart ^ | March 12,2019 | Ken Klukowski

[Hojczyk]

WASHINGTON, DC – Senate Republicans are preparing to reinterpret Senate Rules in coming weeks to reduce the number of hours required to confirm presidential nominations, responding to Democrats’ unprecedented obstruction of President Trump’s nominees for both the judiciary and the Executive Branch.

In fact, that is what Senate Democrats are doing now. Judges are being slow-walked, with more cloture votes being required in two years for President Trump’s picks than all the judicial nominations of every previous president combined since the filibuster was created in the late 1800s. Similarly, hundreds of the 1,200 Senate-confirmed positions in the Trump administration are still vacant.

After two years of debating what to do about this unprecedented obstruction, Senate Republicans now appear to have the votes to reinterpret Senate rules to rein in this practice. It takes a two-thirds supermajority vote in the Senate (67) to change the chamber’s rules, but it only takes a simple majority (51) to reinterpret existing rules.

Under a reinterpretation proposed by Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), nominees for the Supreme Court, federal courts of appeals, the Cabinet, and certain commissions can still receive 30 hours of post-cloture debate. However, nominations for federal trial courts – called district courts – and all other administration posts will be limited to two hours.

A number of Republicans who are either moderates or who place special value on Senate traditions have been unwilling to take this step. But the mood has changed as those senators have witnessed the problem continuing to worsen, as Democrats have spurned entreaties by these Republicans’ to meet them partway.

[Karliner]

Yeah right. They blther and dither and do nothing. They’ve sold Trump and the country down the river with their inept ways.

[RetiredArmy]

You assume the have the same goals and fears we do. They do not.

You are absolutely correct. I believe in my heart of hearts that the grand majority of so called republicans are actually avid supporters of the One World Government bunch. They want Trump gone and their goals to continue. RINOs rule the party. They are no different than the commies. One and the same.

[Innovative]

Excellent. About time.

[KIDFOH]

If a judge nominee needs a simple majority vote to be placed ‘on the bench’ there should NEVER be a procedural process to block or stall the appointment that requires more than a simple majority.

Likewise - a bill that only requires a simple majority vote to pass into law should NEVER be allowed to be held up by a procedure that requires a greater vote percentage than that required by the Constitution. We see cloture votes requiring a super majority blocking items that need only a simple majority to pass. That has virtually the same effect as requiring a super majority to pass anything. This, in effect, has changed the Constitution, but without actually going through the correct process to institute that change.

IOW - how on earth can a Constitutional vote be held up by a non-Constitutional vote / procedure? This should never have ever been allowed in the first d@mn place!