How to Restore Functional Government in the Senate

Posted by Tina

Democrats launched a “resist” campaign when Trump was inaugurated, vowing to block his agenda at every turn. They have kept their word using various stalling techniques: voting as a block against all legislative proposals and delaying and blocking confirmation votes for appointed positions. But Republican Senator Tom Cotton has a plan to change that:

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., says Democrats have forced the Senate into 47 cloture votes this year alone on President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees, compared with just six cloture votes in the first years of the four prior administrations combined.

Cotton said Senate Democrats are abusing procedures that allow them to stymie Trump’s executive branch nominees. He said that allows career bureaucrats to run their agencies anyway they want, “without any political accountability.” …

Cotton proposes an end to the “blue slip” tradition because the courtesy is being abused, allowing a single senator to become the last word on any nominee from his home state. Democrats have also insisted that the Senate delay consideration of court appointees until the American Bar Association approves a nominee, giving that un-elected special interest body power in the process. That’s appalling!! The third procedure that’s being abused has to do with time frames allotted for debate:

…the majority party files a “cloture petition to end debate on a nomination,” which is then followed by an intervening day before the vote is held for cloture.

After the cloture vote, he said, there are up to 30 legislative hours of debate before the Senate goes through with the confirmation vote, and Democrats are often using those entire 30 hours to stall Trump nominees.

He said Democrats should agree to “30 hours of debate for Cabinet, and Supreme Court, and circuit court nominees; eight hours for all sub-Cabinet positions; and two hours for district court nominations.”

Republicans agreed to these terms when they were in the minority so there should be no resistance to the proposal. Congress spends more time on vacation than most Americans will ever enjoy in their jobs. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that they work efficiently and in a timely fashion. So to make clear his intention to speed up the process and restore the Senate to a higher level of functionality Cotton issued a threat:

“Either they accept those exact same terms or the Republicans, by a simple majority vote, will change the rules of the Senate. We will eliminate cloture votes for all nominations, and we’ll set debate for every nomination for all offices to two hours.”

Sounds at least as reasonable as the Democrats were when they were in the majority. You go for it Senator Cotton!