Days before the August recess, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) joined Brian Kilmeade on Fox Radio to discuss the Democrats’ “unprecedented” obstruction of President Donald Trump’s civilian nominees. Thune said:
This is the first president in history who has never had, at this point in his presidency, a civilian nominee approved either by unanimous consent or voice vote in the Senate, which is a way of expediting nominees that you know are broadly supported. So, they [Democrats] are delaying, obstructing, blocking, at every point in the process.
There was a time when the majority of Senate confirmations were made by unanimous consent.
During a floor speech last week, Thune voiced frustration with his Democratic colleagues’ obstruction of the confirmation process and urged greater cooperation.
He noted that 98% of civilian nominees were confirmed by unanimous consent or voice vote during the first terms of Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. That share declined to 90% under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, fell further to 65% during President Trump’s first term, and dropped again to 57% under President Biden. However, Thune said, so far, in the first eight months of Trump’s second term, not a single nominee has been confirmed by unanimous consent or voice vote.
“By this point in his administration, President Biden had had 76 [nominees confirmed],” he said. “Trump’s nominees have faced a historic level of obstruction.”
He cited data on how smoothly the confirmation process had worked out in previous administrations compared to the current one.
He called for “an end to the ridiculous – and I mean ridiculous – delays on every nomination, including on nominations that Democrats ended up supporting in significant numbers.”
Democrats, he said, were holding up nominations “because they don’t like President Trump.”
And Democrats’ obstruction is not only preventing voters from getting the administration they elected, it’s also slowing down the essential business of the United States Senate.Over August, Mr. President, my colleagues and I discussed various ways of addressing this problem and expediting confirmations.And there are a lot of options on the table – none of which, I might add, would be necessary if the Senate Democrats treated this president [how] Republican and Democrat Senates have treated … Republican and Democrat presidents for all of American history.
Democrats must show “a willingness to acknowledge President Trump won an election, the American people voted for him, and they expect him to be able to populate his administration with the people that he wants to serve in many of these positions.”
Thune warned:
If Democrats continue to obstruct, if they continue to drag out confirmation of every single one of the nominations of a duly elected president, if they continue to slow the Senate’s business to such a drastic degree, then we’re going to have to take steps to get this process back on a reasonable footing.And one way or the other, it’s going to have to get fixed.
Republicans have several options. They are hoping to avoid the most drastic option, the “nuclear option,” which would involve changing the rule by a simple majority vote. This would allow them to bypass Democrats. It also might come back to haunt them in the future when they are in the minority.
They could accept an offer from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to Thune made through intermediaries on the eve of the August recess, one that sounded a lot like extortion.
According to a source who spoke to Politico on the condition of anonymity:
[Democrats] would trade a small tranche of nominations now for the administration unfreezing certain funding. Democrats are then offering to do another tranche later this year, but the deal would be off if the administration transmits another request to the Senate to claw back more spending.
Wisely, Thune rejected that proposal.
The most likely course for the GOP will be the use of “en bloc” voting. Thune told Fox that before Schumer’s leadership, “This was always done in a way where, if you had some of the lower-level nominees in the administration, those were all voted ‘en bloc,’ they were packaged, they were grouped, they were stacked.”
During an interview with Fox News on Saturday, Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) said that next week, Senate Republicans plan to “move forward with a proposal to move ‘en bloc’ nominees who have either in the past been [confirmed] by unanimous consent — meaning no objection — or bipartisan support. That will allow us to clear our backlog.”
During an interview with Thune last week, Fox News’ Dana Perino noted, “President Trump is basically being asked to run a marathon with 20-pound weights on his ankles because he can’t get his team confirmed.”
She asked Thune how “what the Democrats were doing” was different than what Republicans had done to them in the past.
He replied:
Dana, this is different from anything that’s been done in history. … It is unprecedented. It is historic. It is a blockade unlike anything we’ve seen. It is Trump Derangement Syndrome totally on steroids and it’s got to be fixed. We can’t sustain this. The president needs his team in place. The American people voted for that. They want him to be able to implement his agenda. He needs his people in these key positions in order to do that.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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