[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 118 (Thursday, July 13, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3982-S3983]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              Nominations

  Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, it has been nearly 7 months since 
President Trump took office. He was sworn in on the steps of the 
Capitol on January 20.
  Our colleagues across the aisle have had, frankly, more than enough 
time to come to terms with the election results. Unfortunately, they 
seem to be channeling their disappointment through the confirmation 
process by engaging in an unprecedented level of obstruction.
  We spent all this week when the Senate could do no other business on 
the executive calendar than to confirm three nominees--three nominees 
of about 500 that need to be appointed by the President. They are there 
only because the President would want them there. They come and go as 
Presidents come and go. Many of them have gone. The problem is that 
their replacements haven't been there.
  If there is any doubt as to just how unprecedented this drawn-out 
confirmation process has been, let's look at how it stacks up against 
the previous administration. We are only a couple of weeks away from 
August, and Senate Democrats have only allowed us to confirm 52 of 
President Trump's 216 nominees. That is 24 percent. By the August 
recess of President Obama's first term, the Senate had confirmed 313 of 
his 454 nominations, or 69 percent.
  So we start out with an incredibly slow start, where previous 
administrations--both the Bush administration and the Obama 
administration--by the end of the first week, or often by the end of 
the first day, had most of their Cabinet confirmed.
  Getting a Cabinet confirmed is a process that took every minute of 
time that the Senate rules could possibly be stretched to allow.
  Then, we look at nominations. The President, as I said, has nominated 
216 people. Less than one out of four of them have been confirmed. In 
President Obama's term, even though he had more nominees by this time, 
he had a lot more confirmations. The Senate confirmed 69 percent of the 
Obama nominees.
  There are currently more than 150 nominations waiting for 
confirmation, many of them are already out of committee. They are ready 
to come to the floor, but Senate Democrats have caused this backlog by 
using every procedural tactic to needlessly delay nominees. But, when 
they delay the nominees, they also delay our ability to get to the 
other work.
  So there are two questions here. Are you going to let the President 
take over the government, which the Constitution and the Senate have 
been an active part of? Are you going to get the other work done? If 
you don't let the President take over the government, how do you 
effectively get the other work done? It is really a plan that works 
really well if what you want to do is slow down any changes of where 
the government was on January 20.
  A Wall Street Journal editorial earlier this week said:

       Democratic obstruction against nominees is nearly total, 
     most notably including a demand for cloture filings for every 
     nominee--no matter how minor the position. This

[[Page S3983]]

     means a two-day waiting period, and then another 30 hours of 
     debate. The 30-hour rule means Mr. Trump might not be able to 
     fill all of those 400 positions in four years.

  In fact, at the rate we are going, it will take more than 11 years to 
fill all the jobs that the President is supposed to be able to fill. I 
guess that would put us in the third term of the Trump Presidency 
before he ever got every job filled the first time, which the President 
is expected to fill under the laws that have been there, most of them 
for a long time.
  The Wall Street Journal editorial talks about these difficult terms, 
like cloture. What does that mean? That means that you have to get a 
vote to move forward with the nomination--normally, not done where 
nominations are concerned.
  There is a rule that allows you to have vigorous debate on any 
nominee who really is a problem, but that rule has clearly been abused. 
Now the cloture vote only takes 51 votes. This is no odd Senate 
majority or anything like that. A majority of the Senators can vote to 
move forward with the nominee. But then, if you will not consent to 
waive any of the other rules, you have to wait 2 days before you can 
get to that. You can't do anything else during those 2 days. Then you 
have to have 30 hours of debate.
  That has happened over and over. As a matter of fact, this happened 
30 times. That sounded like about 5 days to me, certainly 3\1/2\ days. 
That whole process has happened 30 times, only to have many of these 
nominees get 90 or more votes, to have no debate on the floor about the 
nominee for whom you are supposed to be insisting on 30 hours of debate 
and to come to the floor and talk about whatever else you want to talk 
about. But if you go back and view the tape on whatever has happened 
during these confirmations, you will find very little discussion of the 
30 times that 30 hours of debate was supposedly required before we 
could get to a final vote. Then, often, in the final vote, in a 
bipartisan effort to find nominees who are willing to serve, they get 
more than 90 votes. That just has never happened before.
  By the first August recess in his administration, President Obama 
only had eight cloture votes. So what has happened here 30 times under 
President Trump happened 8 times under President Obama. Three percent 
of the nominees confirmed under President Obama had a cloture vote 
between swearing in and August, but 60 percent of the nominees from 
President Trump have had a cloture vote, but about the same amount of 
real debate. If we look back at what happened in 2009, the hours of 
actual debate on nominees were about the same, but the use of the 
maximum abuse of the rules is different.
  Let me say this. The rules of the Senate were designed to protect the 
minority, and that is a good thing. This is a unique body in a 
democratic country, where the minority has been traditionally 
protected, and that protection lasts until the minority begins to abuse 
it. There will be a point here pretty quickly where I think Senators 
are going to have to wonder if this rule is any longer a rule that 
should be sustained.
  We cannot continue to do what we are doing. We don't have 11 years 
and 4 months to confirm the Trump nominees. Nobody would want the 
President to have--well, maybe not anybody--an 11-year and 4-month 
term. But our friends on the other side are acting like that is how 
long he has to get just this rudimentary part of this job done that 
largely should have been done in the first 6 months.
  Only 10 percent of the President's nominees' confirmations have been 
done by a voice vote. That is another alternative--just bring the 
nominee, nobody objects to waiving the rules, and you have a voice 
vote.
  Ten percent of President Trump's confirmations have been done by 
voice vote while more than 90 percent of President Obama's 
confirmations were done by a voice vote. So we have the same 
percentages there, just totally turned around--10 percent for Trump and 
90 percent for President Obama. The contrast is striking. It is not 
just simply math. It is, again, about the key positions of government 
that aren't filled.
  As a member of the Intelligence Committee, I hear all the time that 
our country faces more threats from more directions than at any time in 
our history. But we have only been allowed by this strung-out process, 
insisted on by Senate Democrats, to confirm 6 of the President's 22 
nominees for the Department of Defense. The Department of Defense has 
22 nominees already made, and only 6 of them are over there doing the 
jobs, of which the President says: Here are the 22 people I would like 
to have, and there will be more names to follow.
  The positions that haven't been confirmed are the Deputy Secretary of 
Defense, the next job in the Defense Department and the principal 
deputy under the Secretary of Defense; and the Assistant Secretary of 
Defense.
  I don't know about everybody else. I was a little confused by how 
long these titles are. But if you look at what each of these people do, 
these are critical to the mission of defending the country and they 
haven't been filled. These are positions that need to be filled.
  The President continues to work to improve the safety of our 
communities and enforce our Nation's laws. We have seen obstruction 
when it comes to the Justice Department and the 19 people who have been 
willing to serve--all of whom I think are out of committee or about to 
be out of committee.
  If one of them is out of committee, that would be enough. But the 
President has nominated 19 people to fill these vacancies, and only 3 
nominees have been confirmed. Two of the nominees who have been 
reported out of the committee received votes of 20 to 0 and 19 to 1. We 
would think that is somebody who could come to the floor with a likely 
voice vote.
  My bet is that when they do get voted on, 98 Senators will vote for 
them. But if we continue to do what we are doing now, only 2 days after 
a cloture vote, 2 days after the vote, and then almost a day and a half 
of debate after that, it is a disservice to the people that elected us 
to do these jobs and even a greater disservice to the people who 
elected the President to do his job.
  Once again, these are key positions in Justice--the Solicitor General 
of the United States, the principal person who argues in court for the 
United States of America--and it is the middle of July.
  My colleagues from across the aisle have clearly decided that it is 
in their best political interests to stand in the way of the 
President's nominees, but, maybe, more importantly, to stand in the way 
of the Senate's ability to get its job done.
  When I talked to Missourians, they want to know what we are doing and 
why we can't get the work done that they sent us here to do. They also 
want to know why we can't let the President do the job he was sent here 
to do.
  We need to be working on the failures of the current healthcare 
system, how we make college more affordable, and what we can do to 
improve our infrastructure. Those are things we need to get to, and we 
need to allow the President to put his government in place for that to 
happen.
  He was sworn in 7 months ago. He has every right to put the 
government in place. It is time for our friends across the aisle to 
stop grandstanding, to stop standing in the way. It is time to stop 
debating the Presidential election, and it is time to start debating 
the issues of how to run the government and to let the President put 
his people in those jobs so that process can begin.
  Mr. President, I see my friend from Wisconsin is here. I will 
conclude my remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.
  (The remarks of Mr. Johnson pertaining to the introduction of S. 1553 
are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills 
and Joint Resolutions.'')
  Mr. JOHNSON. Madam President, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Blunt). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.