[Pages S5480-S5481]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              Nominations

  Mr. President, I wish I had more good news or better news to offer 
this morning on the nominations front. I wish I could say that we had 
also reached an agreement on a nominations package yesterday, but, 
unfortunately, the Democrats continue to engage in their historic 
obstruction.

       [F]or decades, Democrats and Republicans have regularly 
     cooperated to swiftly confirm the many, many individuals 
     selected by each President to serve in their administration.
       Regardless of the party in the White House, both sides have 
     long agreed that a President deserves to have his or her 
     Administration in place, quickly.
       That doesn't mean we don't disagree. But it does mean when 
     nominees are held up, opposed, or blocked--it's for a 
     legitimate purpose, not for leverage in partisan games, to 
     score political points at the expense of public safety.

  Now let me repeat that last line:

       But it does mean when nominees are held up, opposed, or 
     blocked--it's for a legitimate purpose, not for leverage in 
     partisan games, to score political points at the expense of 
     public safety.

  Now, interestingly enough, those last lines aren't mine. Those are 
the words of the Democrat leader just 3 short years ago. And I wish--I 
truly wish--it was the philosophy of the Democrat leader and his party 
still espoused today. But, instead, they have embraced a historic level 
of obstruction, slow-walking every single one of President Trump's 
civilian nominees, including--including--nominees who have ultimately 
received substantial Democrat support. That is the very definition of 
the partisan games the Democrat leader deplored just a few short years 
ago.
  And so just to put a fine point on that, I want to show you where we 
are relative to history with regard to nominations.
  As you can see going back to the Presidency of George H. W. Bush--41, 
as he is affectionately described--98 percent of all the nominees were 
confirmed either by voice vote or unanimous consent. That was also true 
of the Democrat President Bill Clinton. George W. Bush, 43, had 90 
percent of his nominees confirmed either by voice vote or unanimous 
consent. And President Obama--so we went Republican back to Democrat--
also had 90 percent of his nominees confirmed either by voice vote or 
unanimous consent.
  Now, that started to drop off in the first Trump administration down 
to 65 percent. It dropped down to 57 percent during the Biden 
administration.
  But what is really striking is here we are 6 months into--more than 
that really now--this current administration, and that right there, a 
big fat zero, is what the Democrats have allowed in terms of nominees 
either confirmed by voice vote or unanimous consent.
  Now, under any circumstance, I understand there are strong 
disagreements with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle--don't 
like the President, all that; there is certainly that element--but this 
is historic and unprecedented obstruction when it comes to allowing 
someone who has been elected by the people of this country, in a fairly 
significant, I would argue, mandate, an election, to get their person 
in place to do the jobs that the American people elected that 
President--President Trump--to do. And so you cannot, under any 
circumstance, defend that.
  Now, you can say--you know, we can argue, and these numbers are not 
moving in the right direction, which is why I would argue we have got 
to change the process by which we do this; otherwise we are going to 
continue to deteriorate to where any President who comes in here is 
going to be very, very hard-pressed to do the job the American people 
elected him to do.
  But, really, that one right there, that big fat zero, sticks out in a 
very big and significant way.
  And I wonder how Democrats' continued determination to slow-walk 
President Trump's nominees will play with the voters who, after all, as 
I said, elected President Trump with the thought that he would be able 
to fill up his administration.
  Democrats need to get serious about agreeing to a nominations package 
to confirm a number of these outstanding nominations, and I would tell 
you--and they are well aware of this--that a lot of the nominees on the 
current backlog are nominees who have bipartisan support; in some 
cases, broad bipartisan support, multiple Democrats voting for these 
nominees coming out of the committee. There are a whole bunch of those 
that are backed up on this backlog.
  And so I sincerely hope that they will change their tune and decide 
to work with this administration to make that happen; otherwise, I 
mean, I have said this before, and I think it is true. We are setting 
records around here for hours in session. We are setting records around 
here for number of votes cast--I mean, not by a little, by a lot--
relative to previous Senates, and a lot of it has to do with that 
statistic I just pointed out.
  It is time for that to change, and we are not asking a lot. We are 
just simply saying: Treat this President, at least on some level, in 
the way that previous Presidents, both Democrats and Republican 
Presidents, have been treated in the past by both Republican and 
Democrat Senates.

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