Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) on Wednesday set the stage for Senate Republicans to begin moving forward next month on proposals to change the rules for processing more than 140 of President Trump’s stalled nominees, many of them noncontroversial picks to lower-level executive branch positions.
Barrasso, in an op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal, noted Trump has more than 1,000 senior-level appointments that require Senate confirmation but, faced with staunch Democratic resistance, the Senate has filled only 135 of those positions.
“Confirming even the most routine nominees is now a bitter fight. It is time to change Senate confirmation rules,” Barrasso wrote.
“Through dilatory warfare, Democrats have broken their ‘advice and consent’ responsibilities. This drastic a slow-roll has never happened under a modern president,” he wrote.
Barrasso noted the Senate confirmed 98 percent of former Presidents George. H.W. Bush’s and Clinton’s nominees quickly through voice votes or unanimous consent agreements.
He pointed out the Senate confirmed 90 percent of former Presidents George W. Bush’s and Obama’s nominees by voice vote or unanimous consent, but then the rate of speedy confirmations dropped dramatically during Trump’s first term and former President Biden’s term.
The Senate confirmed 65 percent of Trump’s nominees during his first term by voice vote or unanimous consent and 57 percent of Biden’s nominees in such speedy fashion.
This year, however, Democrats have refused to confirm a single Trump civilian nominee by voice vote or unanimous consent.
“The blockade’s scale is staggering. Democrats have forced multiple roll-call votes on more than 40 nominees for posts” that previously were considered routine confirmations, he wrote.
“These confirmations used to take seconds. Now, each can take days,” he said.
Barrasso said nearly half of the 145 nominees who have been approved in committee and are waiting to come to the Senate floor received bipartisan support on the panel level.
“Yet they are all trapped in Senate procedural purgatory,” he said.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) tried to churn through as many nominees as he could before the Senate left for its annual August recess — working into the first weekend of the recess after a busy and draining six months of legislative session.
He, Trump and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) attempted to negotiate a deal to break the logjam of nominees, but the president rejected Schumer’s attempt to win concessions on frozen funding, telling the New York senator to “go to hell.”
Senate Republicans are now considering several changes to the rules to speed up the 145 stalled nominees.
They’re talking about allowing the majority to confirm lower-level nominees in batches, eliminating the time-consuming vote to limit debate before a final vote, and collapsing the time between cloture votes and final votes for these nominees from two hours to 15 minutes.
“Senate Republicans are determined to confirm Mr. Trump’s qualified nominees one way or another. Republicans are considering changes to the Senate rules to end the most egregious delay tactics,” Barrasso wrote in the Journal.
The Wyoming Republican also said Republicans would consider voting with the House to put Congress into an extended recess to give Trump the power to make recess appointments, though some Republicans have expressed concerns about that plan, including Sens. Thom Tillis (N.C.) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska).
“For decades, noncontroversial nominees moved through the Senate in a timely manner. Democrats destroyed this tradition by treating every Trump nominee as controversial,” Barrasso wrote.
“The American people elected President Trump and Republicans with a directive to get the U.S. back on track. They didn’t vote for Democratic delay and obstruction,” he added.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
Comments