Fed up with Democrats' use of procedure to jam up the confirmation process of President Donald Trump's nominees, a group of Republican senators are pursuing options to mitigate it, including the nuclear option, The Hill reports.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., is leading the charge to limit the amount of debate time on every nominee, even if that means changing Senate rules to allow confirmation by a simple majority.
Mitch McConnell instituted the nuclear option last year in order to speed up confirmation for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, but the Senate majority leader is against the nuke option across the board.
Prior to that, then Democratic majority leader Harry Reid did the same in 2013 for executive branch and judicial nominees below the Supreme Court.
"It's completely gotten out of hand," The Hill quoted Johnson. "It's ridiculous we have all these 30 hours of post-cloture time. It's chewing up the clock and we can't address the major problems facing this nation. I've been recommending for quite some time to utilize the Harry Reid precedent to change the rules [with] 51 votes."
Trump has lobbied Senate Republicans frequently — usually over Twitter — to alter the rules on his nominees to overcome the historic obstruction by Democrats.
With just the one-seat majority in the Senate, Republicans don't have the votes to change the rules, especially sans McConnell's support. Sen. James Lankford is leading Republicans' debate with Democrats to negotiate limits on the amount of time that must elapse before being able to proceed on a nominee.
Republicans are seeking 8 hours on executive branch nominees below Cabinet level and 2 hours for district court nominees, same as in 2013, The Hill reports.
Otherwise, Democrats can continue demanding the full 30 hours on every candidate.
"Ideally it would be the regular order," Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Thune said. "If (Democrats) continue this practice of just dragging things out and making it really impossible to get anything done then I could see our members saying, 'enough already.'"
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