After months of gridlock, the Senate jumpstarted President Trump’s judicial appointments by confirming 31 nominees last week and planning another flurry of confirmation votes in the days ahead.
The faster pace followed intense pressure from conservative groups, including one that threatened to launch an expensive and unflattering advertising campaign about the glacial pace of judicial confirmations under Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
“Leader McConnell and [Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck] Grassley are doing great work helping to clear the backlog of judges created by Democrat obstruction and we look forward to more speedy confirmations,” Judicial Crisis Network Policy Director Carrie Severino said.
McConnell drastically stepped up the pace on clearing Cabinet picks as well. The Senate by voice vote Thursday confirmed 27 Cabinet nominees, among them 16 new ambassadors.
Republican leaders plan to keep up the pace.
The floor schedule will be devoted to confirming Trump’s executive and judicial nominees, at least until the Senate takes up a bill to overhaul the tax code, which is predicted some time in November or December.
Next week’s list so far includes five of Trump’s lower-level Cabinet picks.
“We are going to keep plowing through this until we move to tax reform,” Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, told the Washington Examiner.
The initial confirmation slowdown was due in part to the floor schedule. Senate lawmakers were tied up much longer than they anticipated on the twice-failed effort to repeal and replace Obamacare, for example.
But Senate Democrats are a main cause of the backlog.
For many nominees, the minority party insisted on using all 30 hours of debate time for each vote, which limited the number of confirmations in any given work week.
Few Democrats used the extended floor time to debate the nomination. Rather, it was a tactic to perpetuate a sluggish pace.
Partly in response to the pressure from conservative groups and some Senate GOP lawmakers, McConnell last week put four key judicial nominees on the floor schedule and threatened to keep the Senate all weekend until they were confirmed.
Democrats, who are in the minority and are powerless to block nominees, quickly gave up their demands on lengthy debates, and all four nominees were cleared ahead of the usual Thursday afternoon departure time for senators.
“There was nothing to be gained by staying,” Minority Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill., told the Washington Examiner.
Republican lawmakers are happy with the expedited pace. Democrats were wasting time, they insisted.
“I have great respect for the Senate rules and I want everybody to be able to have their say, but at the same time, government has to function,” Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., told the Washington Examiner. “The vacancies have to be filled.”
Democrats may start stalling again, depending on the nominee, Durbin said.
Republicans are hoping to strike a deal with Democrats to shorten debate time on most Trump nominees for the remainder of the 115th session.
Democrats last week refused to acknowledge the possibility of a deal, but Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., who is heading up the effort, said talks are underway to find a compromise like the one struck between the parties in 2013 to shorten debate time on former President Barack Obama’s nominees.
“Just conversations at this point,” Lankford said. “We are taking that exact same agreement and saying if it was good for that time period, when President Obama was here, why isn’t it good to have it now?”
