Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he does not yet see the need to use the “nuclear option” to override Democratic objections and impose a rule change to speed up confirmations of President Trump’s nominees.
“The cooperation has picked up some this year,” McConnell, R-Ky., said following a meeting with President Trump and the Senate GOP conference. “The ability to confirm nominees has improved. The attitude of the Democrats seems to be better. That’s the best way to solve the problem. To get back to some degree of normalcy.”
Recommended Stories
Some Republicans have been pushing for a change in the Senate rules that would reduce the hours of debate time required for nominees in order to speed along the confirmation process. In many cases this year, Democrats have refused to agree to shorten debate time, dragging out the process for each nominee for days at a time.
The Senate Rules Committee last month advanced a resolution to shorten debate time. McConnell, however, appears in no hurry to bring it to the floor, in part because of the lack of partisan agreement on the resolution.
The Senate passed a similar resolution in 2014 to shorten debate time when Democrats were in charge, but it received bipartisan support. McConnell said he’s reluctant to change the rules because Democrats won’t agree to it this time.
“The Democrats are not in position to do that now,” McConnell said. “We continue to discuss whether it would be necessary.”
McConnell said Democrats are allowing faster confirmations in recent weeks and are also signaling they’ll cooperate on passing fiscal 2019 spending bills.
The issue did not come up in the meeting with Trump that Senate Republicans held with the president Tuesday.
“The main thing is to get our work done,” McConnell said. “I’m somewhat optimistic, based on conversations I have had with the Democratic leader on the appropriations process, that we are going to have a higher level of cooperation than we’ve had.”
Last year, the Senate failed to pass a single appropriations bill because Democrats were opposed to the legislation and wanted changes made to equalize military and domestic spending.
