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.

Under Senate Rule XXII, debate on any matter can continue indefinitely. This is called a filibuster, when senators are deliberately continuing debate for the purpose of preventing a vote – unless three-fifths of senators (60) vote to break the filibuster by invoking cloture. Once cloture is invoked, further debate is limited to 30 additional hours, then a final vote must take place.

View Comments (5)

Rule XXII is designed to force debate on legislation. Historically it has generally not been used on presidential nominations. You can amend legislation, but a nomination is a simple yes-or-no proposition.

Article II of the Constitution specifies that all federal judges require Senate confirmation, as do senior positions in the administration. Currently, 1,200 positions out of 4,100 political appointments in a presidential administration are “principal officers” that are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate….

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…. (Excerpts from Ken Klukowski  article on Breitbart)