[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 58 (Wednesday, April 3, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2210-S2211]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              NOMINATIONS

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, now on an entirely different matter, 
the comprehensive campaign by Senate Democrats to delay Senate 
consideration of Presidential nominations is now more than 2 years old. 
As I have explained in recent days, it is time for this sorry chapter 
to end. It is time to return this body to a more normal and reasonable 
process for fulfilling its constitutional responsibilities, no matter 
which party controls the White House.
  The Senate had to hold 128 cloture votes on nominations during 
President Trump's first 2 years. That is 128, more than 5 times as many 
as the equivalent period for the previous 6 Presidents combined.
  Now, 42 of those 128 were for positions that had never, in the past, 
required cloture votes, like the Assistant Secretary of Health and 
Human Services, the General Counsel at the Department of Agriculture, 
or the Ambassador to Luxembourg. It is not a thoughtful investigation 
of a few highly controversial nominees and not a principled opposition 
in some rare circumstances. These are part and parcel of Senate 
tradition.
  But grinding, across-the-board systematic obstruction, under threat 
of filibuster, sparing not even individuals whom literally zero 
Senators opposed in the end--this is new. This is new, and it needs to 
stop.
  Well-qualified civil servants, academic and business experts, and 
exemplary jurists with broad bipartisan support are all subjected to 
weeks, if not months and months, of pointless delays, and then 
pointless cloture votes tying up floor time, not because a real debate 
was happening, not because there is real due diligence requiring months 
of delay but just because our colleagues across the aisle have chosen 
to endlessly relitigate the 2016 election rather than actually 
participate in governing, just because they wish our President were not 
our President.
  The Department of the Interior has waited 631 days since President 
Trump first nominated an Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management and 
Budget. That is 631 days. Her nomination was voice-voted out of 
committee. After months of inaction, it had to be sent back at the end 
of Congress last year.
  The Millennium Challenge Corporation has waited 450 days since its 
CEO was nominated, and it has been more than a year since the President 
nominated a chair for the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. 
None of these are front-page news, just normal positions the President 
has been trying to fill. In each case and in hundreds of others, 
Democrats have made sure those chairs stayed emptied for far too long.
  This systematic obstruction is unfair to our duly elected President, 
and, more importantly, it is disrespectful--disrespectful to the 
American people who deserve the government they elected. The American 
people deserve the government they elected.
  This problem goes deeper than today. We are talking about the future 
of this very institution and the future functioning of our 
constitutional government. This practice is laying the foundation for a 
dangerous new norm. We cannot set this new precedent that the Senate 
minorities will systematically keep an administration understaffed, 
down to the least controversial nominees, anytime they wish somebody 
else had won the election.
  We need to act. We need to act. We need to act so that in its third 
year, the current administration can finally get more of its team in 
place. We need to act to repair the institutional legacy we are leaving 
and restore a functional nominations process for future administrations 
of both parties.
  For most of the storied history of this institution, the traditions 
that govern the Senate have combined two distinct things--on 
legislation, an ironclad commitment to robust minority rights, 
including extensive debate and the filibuster, and on nominations, a 
reasonable process for considering the individuals the President sends 
us.
  So let me be absolutely clear. The legislative filibuster is central 
to the nature of the Senate. It always has been and must always be the 
distinctive quality of this institution. In the U.S. Senate, dissenting 
voices retain considerable power to shape the debate on legislation. 
Pivotal moments have hinged on the strong convictions of a minority 
that has urged caution or insisted on an amendment.
  I know many of our colleagues on both sides share my view that this 
part of the Senate's DNA must never be put in jeopardy or sacrificed to 
serve either side's momentary partisan whims. In fact, during the last 
Congress, 61 of our colleagues from both sides of the aisle signed an 
open letter making their commitment to the legislative filibuster 
abundantly clear.
  I know many of us were disturbed to read this week in the Washington 
Post that far-left activists are pushing ``an abolish-the-filibuster 
litmus test on the presidential campaign trail, and quite a few of the 
2020 aspirants have at least signaled a willingness to consider it.'' I 
am glad that many of my Democratic colleagues are on the record 
opposing such a shortsighted disaster championed by the far left. The 
commitment of both sides to preserving the legislative filibuster is 
not just a historical matter. It is also very practical. Neither party 
is particularly keen to see the other side enact its entire, full-bore 
legislative wish list the next time they obtain 51 votes.
  Republicans don't want Democrats to enact an entire leftwing agenda 
with 51 votes, and Democrats certainly don't want Republicans to enact 
every last part of our conservative agenda with a mere 51 votes. What 
they are not thinking about is when the shoe is on the other foot. When 
the shoe is on the other foot, and Republicans have a simple majority 
of 51, and there is no legislative filibuster, what would happen? They 
are only thinking about how it might enable them, but not thinking 
ahead to the next time the shoe is on the other foot. In fact, I 
remember that in 2013 I said, when our colleagues on the other side 
insisted on going to a simple 51 votes on the executive calendar: You 
might not like what happens when the shoe is on the other fellow's 
foot.
  I would keep in mind--I would say to my friends on the far left: 
Think about what might happen the next time the people who are not for 
it have 51 votes. We all know that both parties will possess future 51-
vote majorities somewhere down the line. It will happen.
  The Senate's long traditions on legislation therefore need to remain 
in place. But what we are discussing this week is restoring the 
different traditions concerning nominations. The tradition here is 
entirely different. There is no long tradition--none--of what amount to 
mass filibusters of personnel for administrations. There is no 
tradition of systematic, grinding delays under threats of filibuster 
that extend even to nominees whom nobody opposes. All of this is new. 
Until my Democratic colleagues started us down this road in 2003--this 
began in the first administration of George W. Bush--routine systematic 
filibusters of nominations were a foreign thing. It just wasn't done.
  So we need to recover Senate tradition. The effort we will make later 
today is about getting us back to what the tradition in the Senate was 
for a couple of hundred years, down to the Bush 43 first term.
  Yesterday, we had a chance to do just that, working across the aisle 
and through the same process that we overwhelmingly agreed to with 
President Obama. But--stop me if you have heard this one before--Senate 
Democrats chose obstruction instead.
  Never mind that in 2013, a bipartisan majority, including many 
Republicans, passed a similar measure that immediately benefited the 
Obama administration. In other words, to help President Obama, a 
significant number of Republicans joined with all of the Democrats in 
2013 to do something almost exactly like what we will be proposing 
later today. He had just gotten reelected. Do you think we were happy 
about that? We weren't. But we thought the Executive Calendar should be 
expedited for these kinds of nominations that we are discussing today.
  Never mind that the same Democrats who opposed this measure yesterday 
have whispered in the ear to many of us, including the occupant of the 
Chair, that they would be more than happy to support this, provided it 
didn't take effect until 2021. They are more than

[[Page S2211]]

happy to support it, provided it doesn't take effect until 2021. Well, 
that certainly concedes the reasonableness of what we are going to 
achieve later today.
  Because bringing the Senate nomination process permanently back to 
Earth right now would help the Republican administration, they weren't 
interested in doing the right thing--what they did in 2013, what they 
are whispering in our ears now: Oh, no, we cannot do it now because we 
don't like who is in the White House.
  Republicans remain committed to reform. Look at the nomination 
currently before us--a textbook case study on the shameful state of the 
current process. Jeffrey Kessler of Virginia was first nominated as 
Assistant Secretary of Commerce in November of 2017. It took 7 months 
before Democrats on the Finance Committee allowed his nomination to be 
considered. When it was, he was reported out on a unanimous vote. 
Nobody opposed him in the Finance Committee.
  The familiar story continues--another 6 months of inaction. The 
nomination was sent back to the White House at the end of the last 
Congress. So the process started all over again. This time he got a 
voice vote out of the Finance Committee. Everybody just said aye. Yet 
here on the floor, inexplicably, it still required a cloture motion to 
break through the obstruction and give this nominee, whom no one voted 
against, a vote.
  Later today, it appears that at long last we will be able to take 
action to finally advance Mr. Kessler's nomination, to do the 
responsible thing, to begin to unwind this partisan paralysis for the 
good of the Senate and for the future of the constitutional order each 
of us has pledged to protect.

                          ____________________