Senate

Senate GOP eyes ‘nuclear option’ for Trump nominees

by Jordain Carney - 01/21/19 11:33 AM ET

Senate Republicans are mulling using the “nuclear option” to change rules in an effort to speed up consideration of President Trump’s nominees as soon as next week.

Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told radio host Hugh Hewitt on Monday that the Senate could turn to the proposed rules change after they try to take up Trump’s proposal to reopen the federal government, which is likely to be blocked by Democrats.

“I support the move, because Democrats have been in an ahistorical fashion violating precedence about the number of hours in which one debates noncontroversial nominees that have been reported out of different committees of jurisdiction,” Young said, when asked about using the “nuclear option.”

{mosads}He added that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had made the argument to Republicans that without a rules change, “there will be no way for this president or for future presidents … to populate their administration with their own people.”

Asked about when the rules change proposal would be brought to the Senate floor, a spokesman for McConnell said that members “are discussing, but no announcements have been made.”

Republicans have floated cutting down on the amount of time it takes to clear a nominee for years but faced pushback from Democrats and even some members of their own party.

But the GOP’s expanded 53-seat majority in the Senate gives them more leeway to muscle through their proposal.

Using the “nuclear option” would allow Republicans to change the rules with only a simple majority. Democrats previously used the tactic to nix the 60-vote threshold for most nominations, while Republicans followed suit and got rid of the same hurdle for Supreme Court picks in 2017.

Currently, nominations face up to an additional 30 hours of debate time even after they’ve cleared an initial vote that shows they have the simple majority support needed to pass.

But the proposal being discussed by Republicans, which was introduced by Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) during the previous Congress, would cut the debate time down from 30 hours to eight hours. It would further cap post-cloture debate time for district court nominations at two hours.

Most Cabinet-level nominees, as well as Supreme Court nominees and circuit court nominees, would still be subjected to the full 30 hours of debate.

Republicans and the president have fumed for months over the pace of confirmation votes in the Senate, accusing Democrats of using the chamber’s rulebook to drag out any nomination even if it’s not controversial.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said after the GOP retreat last week that “there are a lot of members that would like to see the debate time, post-cloture, lowered from 30 hours.”

“It was discussed at the retreat and many times before and every month that goes by with this sort of blockade increases the number of people that are open to that,” Rubio said.

The proposal is similar to a resolution that passed with bipartisan support in 2013, but only governed the 113th Congress. Democrats were in control of the chamber at the time.

But Democrats have publicly pushed back against efforts by Republicans to change the rules during the Trump administration, arguing it would only add to the increasingly partisan fight over nominations.

No Democrats supported the measure when it came up for a vote in the Rules Committee last year.

—Alexander Bolton contributed.

Tags Donald Trump James Lankford Marco Rubio Mitch McConnell Todd Young