The battle over nominations is spelling trouble for the Senate in other areas, as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle feel the pressure to ratchet up the partisanship in an extended tit-for-tat with no obvious off-ramp in sight.
The Senate on Saturday night adjourned until next month after protracted talks to expedite the confirmation of dozens of President Trump’s lower-level nominees in the face of Democratic resistance went belly up. This left Republicans fuming and increasingly likely to “go nuclear” in changing the chamber’s rules to quicken the confirmation process.
At the same time, Democrats are under pressure to oppose Trump at every turn, with the confirmation process and the looming government funding fight being the most immediate examples.
It’s all leading much of Washington to wonder if the bipartisanship train can get back on the tracks — and at a crucial time.
“I think it is a complete breakdown of the Senate and just absolutely destructive that there can’t be a deal reached on nominations, appropriations, confirmations,” said Jon Kott, a longtime top aide to former Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.).
“The Senate used to work pretty easily in a bipartisan way on those three issues,” Kott continued. “And when you break down on those three, you’re really close to breaking the Senate and turning it into the House.”
While the Senate hasn’t had a sea change moment along the lines of eliminating the filibuster, the chamber could be on the precipice of a major overhaul starting next month.
Chief among them are potential rule changes eyed by Senate Republicans, who were outwardly exasperated toward the final days before August recess over the Democratic blockade of Trump nominees.
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) told reporters on Tuesday that talks have centered on chopping down the amount of time between cloture and confirmation votes. Other members have raised the idea of eliminating a cloture vote altogether, or the possibility of working through multiple nominees at the same time.
The South Dakota Republican also said that if he had his druthers, members would change the law to shift one-quarter to one-third of the roughly 1,200 jobs that currently require Senate approval to just need a presidential appointment.
“That’s too many,” Rounds said. “Most members of the Senate will tell you that they don’t believe it is necessary to go that deep into government to have Senate approval on them.”
Under regular order, Senate rule changes require 67 votes. But Republicans could use a shortcut that requires only 51 votes, giving them the ability to bypass Democratic opposition.
That rarely used shortcut, which more and more Republicans are floating, is known as the “nuclear option” because it is viewed as a major escalation of partisanship.
Going that route could have major ramifications for Senate work coming down the rails, and not just on nominations.
Congress faces a Sept. 30 shutdown deadline, and while the Senate passed its first three-bill government funding package prior to breaking for recess, that lone bit of bipartisan work could be overtaken by the one-two punch of a rule change or a second bill to claw back already appropriated funding.
Democrats were already outraged last month when Congress passed a first package with only GOP votes to claw back funds that had been previously appropriated through a bipartisan process. They warned a second such bill would only poison the well further — as a rule change without Democratic buy-in would also likely do.
“One of these days, Trump is going to have to learn that he needs to work with Democrats to help the American people,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters on Saturday. “The Trump-Republican ‘go-it-alone’ strategy ain’t working, and the American people aren’t happy.”
Complicating the state of play is the pressure both leaders are facing.
Schumer, in particular, in a tricky bind as he attempts to manage a conference that wants to take on Trump at every juncture, but will need to help fund the government next month. He came under heavy fire for marshaling Democrats to help pass a GOP spending bill in March and lawmakers in his party are already warning him against doing so again.
In addition, the Democratic leader will have to balance home state politics, where the New York City mayoral race is among the preeminent races this fall, with progressives and Democrats siding with Zohran Mamdani over former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) in the primary.
According to a recent survey, Schumer is underwater by 18 percentage points with the electorate in his backyard, with 70 percent of respondents also saying they are dissatisfied with the direction of the city. Fifty-one percent also said that they want the next mayor to “stand up” to the president rather than work with him to secure federal funding.
Across the aisle, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has gotten high marks for his opening months atop the conference, having helped shepherd members through the passage of Trump’s mammoth tax package and the rescissions bill, as well as the confirmation of a number of high-stakes nominees.
But balancing a potential rule change with the government funding process and maintaining as much harmony as possible will be a difficult task. In the background are his past calls to uphold the filibuster, which he maintained during his leadership bid that he will not weaken.
“I do think they see the value in the Senate’s role as the cooling saucer for the hot cup of tea. I think that you can still say that with a straight face,” said one former Senate GOP leadership aide.
“I don’t think it’s in anyone’s interest and I don’t think Republicans want to do it first,” the former aide continued. “But I do think all the pressure building up on the noms side needs a valve, and it probably will get and needs the valve on the personnel side.”
Over the last 15 years, the filibuster has remained despite a number of attempts to chip away at it. The late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) decision to change the threshold for lower-court judicial nominees from 60 to 51 votes creaked open the door, which was finally blasted open by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) when they extended that threshold to Supreme Court nominees.
Senate Democrats twice during President Biden’s tenure also pushed to overturn the legislative filibuster, but were thwarted by Manchin and former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.).
Whether there is a way out of this tumult remains to be seen. Rounds believes that the government funding exercise coupled with the upcoming work on the annual National Defense Authorization Act is a prime chance to steer in a bipartisan direction.
But the rules change for nominees and a second rescissions bill looms, potentially dashing those hopes.
“If you turn [the Senate] into the House, you’re gonna lose a lot of the top people who want to be in the Senate, who want to actually get huge legislative wins done for the country,” Kott warned. “And that … will be the death knell for Congress if that happens.”
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