April 3, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 58 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session
NOMINATIONS; Congressional Record Vol. 165, No. 58
(Senate - April 03, 2019)
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[Pages S2210-S2211] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] NOMINATIONS Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, now on an entirely different matter, the comprehensive campaign by Senate Democrats to delay Senate consideration of Presidential nominations is now more than 2 years old. As I have explained in recent days, it is time for this sorry chapter to end. It is time to return this body to a more normal and reasonable process for fulfilling its constitutional responsibilities, no matter which party controls the White House. The Senate had to hold 128 cloture votes on nominations during President Trump's first 2 years. That is 128, more than 5 times as many as the equivalent period for the previous 6 Presidents combined. Now, 42 of those 128 were for positions that had never, in the past, required cloture votes, like the Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services, the General Counsel at the Department of Agriculture, or the Ambassador to Luxembourg. It is not a thoughtful investigation of a few highly controversial nominees and not a principled opposition in some rare circumstances. These are part and parcel of Senate tradition. But grinding, across-the-board systematic obstruction, under threat of filibuster, sparing not even individuals whom literally zero Senators opposed in the end--this is new. This is new, and it needs to stop. Well-qualified civil servants, academic and business experts, and exemplary jurists with broad bipartisan support are all subjected to weeks, if not months and months, of pointless delays, and then pointless cloture votes tying up floor time, not because a real debate was happening, not because there is real due diligence requiring months of delay but just because our colleagues across the aisle have chosen to endlessly relitigate the 2016 election rather than actually participate in governing, just because they wish our President were not our President. The Department of the Interior has waited 631 days since President Trump first nominated an Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management and Budget. That is 631 days. Her nomination was voice-voted out of committee. After months of inaction, it had to be sent back at the end of Congress last year. The Millennium Challenge Corporation has waited 450 days since its CEO was nominated, and it has been more than a year since the President nominated a chair for the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. None of these are front-page news, just normal positions the President has been trying to fill. In each case and in hundreds of others, Democrats have made sure those chairs stayed emptied for far too long. This systematic obstruction is unfair to our duly elected President, and, more importantly, it is disrespectful--disrespectful to the American people who deserve the government they elected. The American people deserve the government they elected. This problem goes deeper than today. We are talking about the future of this very institution and the future functioning of our constitutional government. This practice is laying the foundation for a dangerous new norm. We cannot set this new precedent that the Senate minorities will systematically keep an administration understaffed, down to the least controversial nominees, anytime they wish somebody else had won the election. We need to act. We need to act. We need to act so that in its third year, the current administration can finally get more of its team in place. We need to act to repair the institutional legacy we are leaving and restore a functional nominations process for future administrations of both parties. For most of the storied history of this institution, the traditions that govern the Senate have combined two distinct things--on legislation, an ironclad commitment to robust minority rights, including extensive debate and the filibuster, and on nominations, a reasonable process for considering the individuals the President sends us. So let me be absolutely clear. The legislative filibuster is central to the nature of the Senate. It always has been and must always be the distinctive quality of this institution. In the U.S. Senate, dissenting voices retain considerable power to shape the debate on legislation. Pivotal moments have hinged on the strong convictions of a minority that has urged caution or insisted on an amendment. I know many of our colleagues on both sides share my view that this part of the Senate's DNA must never be put in jeopardy or sacrificed to serve either side's momentary partisan whims. In fact, during the last Congress, 61 of our colleagues from both sides of the aisle signed an open letter making their commitment to the legislative filibuster abundantly clear. I know many of us were disturbed to read this week in the Washington Post that far-left activists are pushing ``an abolish-the-filibuster litmus test on the presidential campaign trail, and quite a few of the 2020 aspirants have at least signaled a willingness to consider it.'' I am glad that many of my Democratic colleagues are on the record opposing such a shortsighted disaster championed by the far left. The commitment of both sides to preserving the legislative filibuster is not just a historical matter. It is also very practical. Neither party is particularly keen to see the other side enact its entire, full-bore legislative wish list the next time they obtain 51 votes. Republicans don't want Democrats to enact an entire leftwing agenda with 51 votes, and Democrats certainly don't want Republicans to enact every last part of our conservative agenda with a mere 51 votes. What they are not thinking about is when the shoe is on the other foot. When the shoe is on the other foot, and Republicans have a simple majority of 51, and there is no legislative filibuster, what would happen? They are only thinking about how it might enable them, but not thinking ahead to the next time the shoe is on the other foot. In fact, I remember that in 2013 I said, when our colleagues on the other side insisted on going to a simple 51 votes on the executive calendar: You might not like what happens when the shoe is on the other fellow's foot. I would keep in mind--I would say to my friends on the far left: Think about what might happen the next time the people who are not for it have 51 votes. We all know that both parties will possess future 51- vote majorities somewhere down the line. It will happen. The Senate's long traditions on legislation therefore need to remain in place. But what we are discussing this week is restoring the different traditions concerning nominations. The tradition here is entirely different. There is no long tradition--none--of what amount to mass filibusters of personnel for administrations. There is no tradition of systematic, grinding delays under threats of filibuster that extend even to nominees whom nobody opposes. All of this is new. Until my Democratic colleagues started us down this road in 2003--this began in the first administration of George W. Bush--routine systematic filibusters of nominations were a foreign thing. It just wasn't done. So we need to recover Senate tradition. The effort we will make later today is about getting us back to what the tradition in the Senate was for a couple of hundred years, down to the Bush 43 first term. Yesterday, we had a chance to do just that, working across the aisle and through the same process that we overwhelmingly agreed to with President Obama. But--stop me if you have heard this one before--Senate Democrats chose obstruction instead. Never mind that in 2013, a bipartisan majority, including many Republicans, passed a similar measure that immediately benefited the Obama administration. In other words, to help President Obama, a significant number of Republicans joined with all of the Democrats in 2013 to do something almost exactly like what we will be proposing later today. He had just gotten reelected. Do you think we were happy about that? We weren't. But we thought the Executive Calendar should be expedited for these kinds of nominations that we are discussing today. Never mind that the same Democrats who opposed this measure yesterday have whispered in the ear to many of us, including the occupant of the Chair, that they would be more than happy to support this, provided it didn't take effect until 2021. They are more than [[Page S2211]] happy to support it, provided it doesn't take effect until 2021. Well, that certainly concedes the reasonableness of what we are going to achieve later today. Because bringing the Senate nomination process permanently back to Earth right now would help the Republican administration, they weren't interested in doing the right thing--what they did in 2013, what they are whispering in our ears now: Oh, no, we cannot do it now because we don't like who is in the White House. Republicans remain committed to reform. Look at the nomination currently before us--a textbook case study on the shameful state of the current process. Jeffrey Kessler of Virginia was first nominated as Assistant Secretary of Commerce in November of 2017. It took 7 months before Democrats on the Finance Committee allowed his nomination to be considered. When it was, he was reported out on a unanimous vote. Nobody opposed him in the Finance Committee. The familiar story continues--another 6 months of inaction. The nomination was sent back to the White House at the end of the last Congress. So the process started all over again. This time he got a voice vote out of the Finance Committee. Everybody just said aye. Yet here on the floor, inexplicably, it still required a cloture motion to break through the obstruction and give this nominee, whom no one voted against, a vote. Later today, it appears that at long last we will be able to take action to finally advance Mr. Kessler's nomination, to do the responsible thing, to begin to unwind this partisan paralysis for the good of the Senate and for the future of the constitutional order each of us has pledged to protect. ____________________