[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 147 (Tuesday, September 9, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6459-S6461]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                 Unanimous Consent Request--S. Res. 379

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I want to begin by thanking our 
colleagues--particularly from Oklahoma and Alabama--for leading the 
working group that was appointed by the majority leader to try to solve 
this problem. In their typical deliberative, careful, and thoughtful 
fashion, they could have come up with a lot of ideas that would, I 
think, perhaps overreach, but rather than do that, they have come up 
with a solution that Democrats themselves have proposed, which strikes 
me as the epitome of fairness.
  But there are three main points I want to make before I sort of 
summarize where I think we are.
  First of all, as my colleagues have eloquently noted, we have 
exhausted virtually every other alternative to this vote to overrule 
the Parliamentarian and establish a new precedent, which is an 
alternative to a formal rule change which takes 67 votes. But we know 
our colleagues will never vote for that, leaving us no alternative but 
to invoke what is sometimes called the nuclear option.
  But as our colleague from Missouri just pointed out, this is really 
not so much a nuclear option as a restoration option. This is restoring 
the Senate to the way it used to work--not just before President Trump 
was reelected but for the last couple of hundred years, where we had an 
orderly process to consider a President's nominees, a committee process 
to vet them, and then a debate and a vote on the Senate floor, so that 
the mandate of the voters in the Presidential election could be carried 
out by the President.
  So we have tried virtually everything else, but I am going to give 
them one last chance here in a minute, but then as I have been thinking 
about it: What have we been doing as we have spent hour upon hour, day 
upon day, week upon week trying to move through all of these various 
Senate-confirmed nominees, with no help--not just no help but with 
active obstruction--from our Democratic colleagues?
  I think about all of the other things that we could be working on--
even together--bipartisan solutions to our Nation's biggest problems 
and challenges. Economists call that opportunity cost. In other words, 
when you are mired down in this mindless obstruction and blocking any 
nominee just because they happen to be nominated by President Trump, 
you are missing the opportunity to do other important things. I know 
all of my colleagues--all 100 of us--came here to, hopefully, do 
important things, and that has been the source of great consternation 
and disappointment, I know, to many of us.
  But then I think about the people who have been nominated by 
President Trump. I have had them tell me this is an honor of a 
lifetime--people who have enjoyed tremendous success in business or in 
their professional lives to then give all that up in order to serve 
their country. These are patriots, and it is profoundly unfair to them, 
to their families, and to the American people to continue to block 
these nominees and leave them, basically, hanging in the wind. I have 
talked to many of them myself, these nominees, with their asking: 
Senator, when can I expect a vote on the Senate floor?
  I say: Well, I don't know.
  Many of them have said: Well, I have had to quit my job or sell my 
business. I have had to go through a rigorous vetting process for 
ethics and legal conflicts of interest and I am waiting and my family 
is waiting, not knowing whether we will be going to, maybe, an Embassy 
somewhere around the world or serving in some other important position 
here in Washington, DC, in the Trump administration. So this is 
profoundly unfair to them.
  And we wonder whether we are having a hard time getting good people 
to want to serve in government. Well, thankfully, there are still 
people who are willing to do it, despite the way they get treated when 
they are nominated. Thank goodness there are still good people who want 
to serve. Our Nation depends on it.
  But just to summarize, more than 140 of President Trump's nominees 
are waiting to be voted on as we speak. I don't know how you argue the 
converse of what I feel to be the case, which is the President won the 
election on November 5, and he is entitled to his team. He is at least 
entitled to an up-or-down vote on the nominations, and the American 
people are the ones who actually gave him that mandate. This is a kick 
in the teeth, a punch in the gut to those voters who voted for 
President Trump in this last election, expecting that he would bring 
change to Washington, DC, but he can't accomplish that mandate without 
his team.
  As we have heard, Senate Democrats are now engaged in an 
unprecedented level of obstruction, preventing these nominees from 
being confirmed and burning up all the floor time when we are in 
session on waiting around to vote on these nominees, most of whom in 
the past would have been confirmed by a voice vote or some sort of an 
expedited process--by consent even--but not with Donald J. Trump as 
President. Democrats have taken a completely different approach in 
obstructing each and every one of his nominees.
  Most of these individuals are uncontroversial. I remember the other 
day, we were voting on the general counsel for advocacy for the Small 
Business Administration, and I asked myself: What is that? And, yes, 
maybe--just maybe--we should limit the number of Senate-confirmed 
positions. I think that might be a good exercise to go through and see: 
Are there people who currently require Senate confirmation for whom it 
really isn't necessary because they only serve for a short period of 
time under the leadership of, maybe, a member of the President's 
Cabinet who is Senate-confirmed?
  Under George Herbert Walker Bush and President Clinton, 98 percent of 
those nominees were confirmed by unanimous consent. Under George W. 
Bush and President Obama, 90 percent were confirmed by unanimous 
consent, which is no debate, no argument--just a unanimous consent 
request, without objection, so ordered.
  During President Trump's first term in office, only 65 percent were. 
So you can see the slide from 98 to 90 to 65. What we have also learned 
is what goes around comes around. With President Biden, his number was 
57 percent, but that is a far cry from what we have seen in President 
Trump's second term, with zero--zero--of these noncontroversial 
nominees, patriots. They want nothing but to serve their country, but 
they are being denied that opportunity out of blind, partisan 
obstruction--mindless obstruction. The only way it can be explained, 
the Senator from Missouri mentioned, is with Trump derangement 
syndrome, and this is it in all of its ugly manifestations. There is no 
other explanation.
  Now, changing the Senate rules is not something we do lightly because

[[Page S6460]]

we know what goes around comes around, but the truth is, Republicans 
are more than willing to live with the change in the rules when 
Democrats are in the majority, when there is a Democrat President, 
which someday there may well be. So we are acting on behalf of all 
Senators, of all Presidents, of all nominees, and the entire American 
people when we say something has to change, and we are going to change 
it this week. I know all of us would prefer to deal with this in some 
way other than overruling the Parliamentarian and invoking the so-
called nuclear option, but we have exhausted all of the other 
possibilities, with one exception, perhaps.
  In a moment, I am going to propose a unanimous consent request on a 
resolution that would allow the majority leader to call up at least 10 
nominees advanced out of the same committee to be considered for a vote 
en bloc, or all together. This is something very similar to that which 
the chairman of the Rules Committee, Senator Klobuchar from Minnesota, 
and Angus King, an Independent from Maine, had proposed in 2023. If 
Democrats were really interested in solving the problem, if they were 
really interested in restoring the Senate to its previous reputation as 
the world's greatest deliberative body, they wouldn't object; they 
would agree. It is their idea, but what remains to be seen is whether 
Senate Democrats will agree to their own proposal.

  If Senate Democrats will consent to this proposal which I will 
propound momentarily, which will allow the en bloc consideration of 
nominees, then we can avoid a rule change, but if they block this 
resolution, they will show their true colors. They will show that this 
is not about deliberation; that this is not about what is in the best 
interests of the American people; that this is not about genuine 
oversight--but that this is naked, partisan obstruction. It will then 
be clear to all of us across the country that Democrat objections to 
changing the rules have nothing--nothing--to do with preserving the 
institutional integrity of the Senate and more to do with their crusade 
against President Trump and the American people who elected him last 
November 5.
  We will see if Senate Democrats would prefer to continue their 
historic obstruction or whether they would consent to let us carry out 
the essential function of this Chamber to provide a vote. That is all 
we are asking for is a vote on the nominations.
  Mr. President, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent 
that the Committee on Rules and Administration be discharged from 
further consideration of S. Res. 379 and that the Senate proceed to its 
immediate consideration; further, that the resolution be agreed to and 
that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the 
table with no intervening action or debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there an objection?
  The Senator from California.
  Mr. PADILLA. Mr. President, reserving the right to object.
  I have been listening to my colleague from Texas. The part that he 
said a couple of times over the last several minutes was that he was 
looking for some sort of explanation as to why Democrats are doing what 
we are doing. So let me attempt to respond to them.
  I can't help but observe that my colleague from Texas and Senate 
Republicans like to point out that Senate Democrats were proposing 
reforms to the nominations process in 2024--yes, just last year. That 
is not a secret. A formal proposal was introduced. The Senate Rules 
Committee, of which I was a member and am now serving as ranking member 
this session, held a public hearing on these issues just over a year 
ago. There have been bipartisan discussions about these issues going 
back years. Senate Democrats led a bipartisan effort in 2024 for 
changes that would take effect in 2025.
  Now, why are those dates important? Because these proposals were made 
back when the outcome of last year's Presidential election was unknown, 
like that is the ultimate fair way to do it. That is the way to get 
bipartisan support. These ideas are good or not good; you support them 
or you don't support them regardless of who is President or which party 
is in power. Unfortunately, Senate Republicans, at the time, showed 
little interest in these reforms, not just last summer but even late 
into 2024.
  I can't help but observe that, at the time, they were engaging in 
their own unprecedented obstruction and blockades of President Biden's 
nominees. One Senator, a Republican Senator, held up routine promotions 
at the Department of Defense for nearly a year--yes, I said the 
``Department of Defense,'' by the way--and they were planning to use 
these same tactics if then-Vice President Harris had been elected 
President. But now that Donald Trump is back in the White House--
surprise, surprise--they are ready and set to make all of these changes 
immediately. The truth is, we shouldn't be in this situation. On that 
much, I guess, we do agree.
  But I am not just talking about the process. I am not just talking 
about the process. Since the beginning of the second Trump 
administration, this Senate has been faced with an unprecedented number 
of highly extreme and unqualified, unfit nominees, many nominees whose 
stated goal is to dismantle the Departments and Agencies and programs 
which they are being nominated to lead. Meanwhile, this administration 
is unlawfully impounding funds, firing people in droves, and abolishing 
Agencies created by Congress--actions that, if this Senate and Congress 
as a whole was living up to its responsibility as a separate but 
coequal branch of government, this branch is supposed to be providing 
oversight and accountability that is so lacking by the majority.
  Yet still, given all that, Senate Democrats have been willing to 
negotiate. We have been partners in good faith. There was even a 
bipartisan agreement on the table just before the August recess that we 
just returned from, a proposal that would expedite some of the less 
objectionable nominees. All the administration had to do was 
accommodate some reasonable requests--bipartisan requests, for that 
matter--from a number of Senators.
  Now, that is the normal process. Presidents and administrations of 
both parties have cooperated with Senators from both parties for 
decades to ensure the confirmation of nominees. But Trump rejected that 
option just weeks ago. The President himself told Leader Schumer and 
Senate Democrats to ``go to hell'' before the recess. Those three words 
are the perfect summary of how this President views Congress. It shows 
his contempt for Congress. That is why we are in this situation when it 
comes to his nominees, many, again, of whom are extreme and unfit in so 
many unprecedented ways.
  Talk about unprecedented. The way this administration is behaving is 
unprecedented. This is not normal. Now, it is clear that the President 
rejected a reasonable bipartisan agreement before the recess, and I 
appreciate my Republican colleagues' new interest in the 2024 proposal 
to reform the nomination process. So in that spirit of bipartisan 
cooperation, I think there is a very good chance that we can pass this 
with a very simple amendment to make the resolution effective January 
20, 2029.
  Nobody here knows who the President will be then. Nobody knows which 
party will control the White House or be in the majority in this body 
by then. Nobody can predict it, and that is exactly the point. If the 
rule is good, then let's do it not knowing who is going to be in power 
when it takes effect.
  So I invite discussion and negotiation about the effective date in 
this resolution or, as my colleague from Texas suggested, maybe even 
revisiting the list of which nominees should require Senate 
confirmation. But this resolution doesn't even begin to discuss or 
address that. So as this resolution is currently drafted, it is 
unacceptable, and, therefore, I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
  The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, of course, I am disappointed that our 
colleague from California is objecting on behalf of the Democrats in 
the Chamber, but I just want to summarize what I think I heard him say. 
First, Democrats are prepared to hold all these nominees hostage 
pending some sort of agreement.
  Well, you heard the Senator from Alabama, the Senator from Missouri, 
and the Senator from Oklahoma all talk about the endless discussions 
with

[[Page S6461]]

individual members of the Senate Democrats, many of whom are 
sympathetic to the problem but were powerless to change it because the 
leadership--the minority leader, the Senator from New York--who 
controls that caucus would not hear of any sort of negotiation.
  We are all accustomed to negotiating around here. We do it on a daily 
basis. But we have tried, in good faith, every possible permutation, 
short of this action that we are taking today. But I have to ask, is it 
in good faith to say: Let's wait until 2029 to change the rules? What 
is President Trump supposed to do over the next 3 years? Govern with 
one arm tied behind his back, without the team that he has selected to 
help him govern the country?
  He won the election on last November 5. He got a mandate. People are 
sick and tired of the status quo here in Washington, DC. They want to 
see change. They want to see things shaken up. But now Democrats are 
saying: You have got to wait until 2029. That is obviously 
unacceptable.
  And then, finally, I would just point out we could have offered a 
number of different solutions to this problem, some that, perhaps, 
would advantage Republicans and disadvantage Democrats, but we haven't 
done that. We said: Let's take the Democratic proposal from 2023 and 
offer that. Surely, they would think that is reasonable since they 
themselves have proposed it in the first instance.
  But what we have just heard is that Democrats won't even agree to 
that--their own proposal, their own idea. So, to me, it is abundantly 
clear that we have exhausted all the opportunities for negotiation. We 
have vetted a number of different alternatives, but it is this all-
consuming, mindless partisan objection to President Trump and his 
policies that are blinding our Democratic colleagues from doing what 
they know is right, which is having a way, with debate and with votes, 
to give the American people a President who has a team to carry through 
the policies that they voted for on November 5.
  So, Mr. President, I am disappointed but not surprised, but I think 
we have done everything we can. This obstruction has to end, and it 
will end very soon.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I know of no further debate on the 
nomination.