Senate Republicans are taking the first steps to change the chamber’s rules on Thursday, making it easier to confirm groups of President Donald Trump’s nominees and overcome Democratic delays.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s move is the latest salvo after a dozen years of gradual changes by both parties to weaken the filibuster and make the nominations process more partisan. He has said the Democrats’ obstruction is “unsustainable” as they have drawn out the confirmation process and infuriated Trump as many positions in his administration have remained unfilled.
Opening up the Senate, Thune, a South Dakota Republican, said that the delays have prevented the Senate from spending time on legislative business.
“We’re going to fix this today, and restore the longtime Senate precedent of expeditious confirmation, and the Senate’s role as first and foremost a legislative body,” Thune said.
"We’re going to fix this today, and restore the longtime Senate precedent of expeditious confirmation, and the Senate’s role as first and foremost a legislative body,” Thune said.
America is distracted, quick push through some bullshit that will bring us even closer to authoritarianism.
What’s even more funny is how the Republicans are the ones that drag out and reject confirmations when it’s a dem president.
They not only started this, they weaponized it during Obama. Democrats always uphold the (arbitrary) confirmation rules when they are in power, always limiting Democrats’ power. When Republicans are in power Democrats cave under threat of changing the (arbitrary) confirmation rules or Republicans change the rules, always expanding Republicans’ power. This is just business as usual.
Right, just like they expedited Obama’s nominees.
Personally I would prefer if we just had a set of rules that meant something instead of “it’s only ok to use roadblocks when it’s not my guy, and it’s ok to change the rules when it is my guy” but I guess if some people prefer to just keep normalizing lawlessness why bother stopping now.
“If you don’t debate nominees, if you don’t vote on individual nominees, if there’s not some degree of sunlight, what will stop Donald Trump from nominating even worse individuals than we’ve seen to date, knowing this chamber will rubber stamp anything he wishes?” Schumer said Monday.
How bad could it really get if we strip away a few more roadblocks? It’s not like we have a bunch of elected officials that just repeatedly chose to protect pedophiles or anything…
Not like we know for a fact they’re trying to dismantle the federal government or anything…
Why have a government, or rules, or laws, or any of it. Just allow for the natural order of things. Unless of course the natural order doesn’t allow the wealthy to win. Then suddenly the law and government must be acknowledged so it can be abused against the plebs.