WASHINGTON, D.C. –
Democrats have done all they can to slow-walk the nominations, which is why Republicans are now very seriously considering changing the rules for confirmation. Both parties have resorted to changing procedural rules for their respective benefit in the past, and each has been critical of the other for doing so.
In a zoom interview this week, Senator Langford spoke about the current situation.
It seems like this has been the busiest year for the Senate in a long time, right?
Sen. Lankford: Four decades, yeah, we’ve had more votes and been in session more days than any session of the Senate in the last four decades. So, yes, we’ve been in session a lot. We’ve been pushing hard. We worked a lot of weekends, worked a lot of nights, worked a lot of overnights, even, to be able to get through the nomination process.
One of the things I’m working on a lot while I’m here (in Oklahoma ) still is I’m on the phone and interacting with some of my colleagues—we’ve got to fix the nomination process. We saw this come to a head in the first week of August, when we couldn’t get nominees through—the president himself had to engage to be able to move nominees in the Senate, and it came to a point where the president was unwilling to be able to negotiate with Chuck Schumer and the things that Chuck Schumer was looking for. And the president just called the negotiations off, but it still left the issue here, to say, we’ve got to solve nominations. It used to be, not that long ago, most nominees move by voice vote, because there’s just not enough time to be able to move 1200 people through. If there were non-controversial nominees or there were lower level nominees and agencies, they moved by voice.
Democrats so far have blocked every single nominee and have forced extended debate on every one of them. We’ve had zero voice votes. That’s never happened in the history of the Senate to have zero voice votes for a nominee. We’ve got to be able to fix this process. That needs to be a bipartisan fix. But I can promise you, Republicans will do this to the next Democrat president, and it’s not good for the country long term for the president to not be able to get their staff. So, we may not all agree with the president’s staff or the president’s selections, but once they’ve gone through committee and they’ve been approved, the president needs to be able to get his team, and we need to get ambassadors all over the world. We can’t even get our ambassadors on the field.
So, I am spending a lot of time on the phone — my colleagues, as well — even while I’m on the road, talking about ‘how are we going to fix the nomination process?’ ‘How can we actually get this done better for this president and every future president?’
So, you’re talking about a rule change when you guys come back?
Sen. Lankford: Yeah, I’m talking about a rule change on that. And I’d like to do it as a bipartisan rule changes the way the Senate does it best. But if we can’t get to that, we’ll have to do a partisan rule change. But we’ve got to fix this process. No matter who is president, they’ve got to be able to have their staff. They can’t just be blocked out the whole time.
