Former Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada pushed rule changes through the U.S. Senate that Sen. Mitch McConnell warned he “would regret” later.
That day is today.
President Donald Trump’s Senate GOP allies, frustrated by delays in confirming dozens of lower-profile nominees, are using a Reid-era rules change to cut back debate on most of his picks.
The GOP plan is to indefinitely restore rules in place during the first few years of President Barack Obama’s second term. Those rules have lapsed, allowing any senator to force 30 hours of debate on a nominee.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky says the situation has gotten out of hand, with the Senate taking 128 votes to end debate on Trump’s nominees during his first two years in office, far more than under other presidents.
“The Senate’s advice and consent power is not supposed to be used to slow-walk all of a president’s nominees simply because one party doesn’t like the president who is doing the nominating,” said South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the second-ranking Republican.
The proposed rules change would limit debate on most nominees to two hours instead of the 30 hours now required. Cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court nominations, and appeals court judges would be exempted from the new rules.
“The comprehensive campaign by Senate Democrats to delay Senate consideration of presidential nominations is now more than two years old,” McConnell said. It’s time for this sorry chapter to end.”
McConnell is set to employ a procedural maneuver to effectively change the rules by a party-line vote instead of the supermajority that would ordinarily be required.
Reid used the same approach in 2013 to lower the filibuster threshold on most nominations to a simple majority when faced with what Democrats said was GOP obstructionism.
Republicans said at the time that Reid and Democrats would come to regret that rules change, which has given Trump largely free rein to fill numerous judicial vacancies that have piled up over the years.
Many Democrats, who benefited from prior rules changes under Obama, are protesting now. They say the GOP move would enable Trump and future presidents, so long as their party controls the Senate, to run roughshod over the Senate.
They say the hurdles required to win confirmation should be difficult as a way to ensure nominees are ethical, qualified and responsive to requests by senators for information.
But other Democrats, McConnell said, indicated behind the scenes that they could support the rules change provided that it wouldn’t take effect until the next administration.
Armed with the White House and control of the Senate, Trump is now confirming both district and appeals court judges at a dizzying pace.
He is positioned to reshape the federal judiciary even if he fails to win a second term.
The Associated Press contributed to this article