Republicans invoke ‘nuclear option’ in push to change Senate rules

Republicans moved Thursday to speed up Senate confirmation of President Donald Trump’s nominees by changing the chamber’s rules over the objections of Democrats.

Senators voted 53-45 to allow themselves to change the rules with a simple majority instead of 60 votes – a move known as the “nuclear option.”

The rules change will allow the Senate to confirm multiple people at once, helping to clear a backlog of nearly 150 nominees awaiting floor votes. Republicans argue it is necessary because Democrats have held up the confirmation process by forcing time-consuming votes on each nominee rather than allowing some of them to be confirmed by voice votes, which is faster.

The change excludes Cabinet officials, Supreme Court justices and federal judges, who must be confirmed one by one.

“Democrats and their political base cannot deal with the fact that the American people elected President Trump,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune , R-S.D., said Thursday on the Senate floor. “And so they’re dragging out every confirmation in retaliation.”

The rules change is the latest instance of the majority party using the “nuclear option” to make it easier to confirm nominees without the consent of the minority. Senate Democrats changed the rules in 2013 to allow most nominees to be confirmed with a simple majority rather than 60 votes. Senate Republicans did the same for Supreme Court nominees in 2017 when they held the majority. The also reduced debate time for most nominees in 2019.

Some Democrats said they agreed that the nominations process was broken. But they said they had stalled Trump’s nominees because they believe they are “historically bad.”

Democrats argued that they tried to negotiate with Republicans last month to confirm more nominees in exchange for the Trump administration releasing some funding that it had held up. But Trump torpedoed the deal, encouraging Republicans to go home for their summer break and telling Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., on social media to “GO TO HELL!”

“It’s true that we put some sand in the gears on purpose,” Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, said on the Senate floor. “That is what minority parties are supposed to do. That is how the United States Senate is supposed to work. And the way you untangle that is through the hard work of negotiating across the aisle – and they just didn’t want to do it.”

A last-minute effort Thursday fell apart to negotiate a bipartisan deal to change the rules and avoid the nuclear option, prompting recriminations from Democrats.

“We were achingly close to a deal – but I am afraid that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have run out of patience,” Schatz said.

A visibly frustrated Thune countered that the time to negotiate was over. “Do you guys like the fact that we’re a personnel department – that the Senate spends two-thirds of its time on nominees?” he said on the Senate floor.

Thune has teed up 48 nominees whom the rules change will allow to be confirmed by a single Senate vote as early as next week. They include officials at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Energy Department, the Interior Department and the Defense Department as well as several ambassadors, among them Callista Gingrich, Trump’s nominee to be ambassador to Switzerland, and Kimberly Guilfoyle, Trump’s nominee to be ambassador to Greece.

Republicans based the change on a proposal that Sens. Amy Klobuchar , D-Minn., and Angus King , I-Maine, made while Democrats controlled the Senate to speed confirmations by allowing votes on up to 10 nominees at a time. They also argue that Democrats will appreciate the rules change the next time a Democrat is president.

“I suspect it’s even possible that some Democrats are secretly relieved that we’re restoring Senate precedent,” Thune said Wednesday on the Senate floor. “After all, I suspect Democrats would prefer not to reap what they’ve sowed this Congress. The prospect of blanket obstruction of every single nominee of a Democrat president can’t look that attractive.”

Schumer has argued that changing the rules will reduce scrutiny of Trump’s nominees and encourage him to select worse ones.

“If you go nuclear, it will be a decision you come to regret,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.