Business Before the Senate

Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, on Thursday afternoon, Democrats abruptly ended extensive bipartisan work on the GENIUS Act and filibustered the Senate's attempt to move this bill. Democrats, I should say, who had voted for the bill in committee, inexplicably chose to vote against it here on the Senate floor. That is pretty difficult to understand.

Providing a regulatory framework for stablecoins is a bipartisan issue. The bill is the product of a bipartisan negotiation, and the vote in the Banking Committee was definitely bipartisan--which leads you to wonder, of course, if this was really about the bill at all or if this was about wanting to deny President Trump or Republicans, more generally, a legislative victory, which might be nice for Democrats but leaves stablecoin issuers and Americans who use stablecoins in the same difficult spot that they are currently in. But unfortunately, it is pretty clear that obstructing, not legislating, is the Democrats' priority right now.

Until Democrats come to their senses and allow us to proceed to the GENIUS Act, we are going to turn to nominations, another area where, unfortunately, Democrats have made obstruction the name of the game. I certainly understand that Democrats are not going to support all the President's nominees; that is their prerogative as Senators. But the way that they are drawing out this process on even noncontroversial nominations is serving no one.

Mr. President, 57 out of 58 of the President's civilian nominees have required cloture votes, an unprecedented number for recent administrations; and of those 57 nominees, 17 received 60 or more votes in support on their final confirmation vote--in other words, support from a number of Democrats as well as Republicans. And yet Democrats dragged out those nominations in the same way they dragged out the nominations of individuals that they universally opposed.

Not a single one of President Trump's civilian nominees has been confirmed by unanimous consent or voice vote--again, something entirely unprecedented in recent years. No other President since at least 1977 has failed to have civilian nominees confirmed by unanimous consent or a voice vote at this point of his administration, except for President Trump in his first term in office.

And as I said, this is serving no one, nor is this going to prevent the President's nominees from getting confirmed. Democrats can drag out nominations all they want, but we are going to fill out the President's administration and ensure that his nominees get into place so that they can do their job and that he can do the job that he was elected to do.

I would like to do this the easy way and confirm noncontroversial nominees expeditiously--in batches, for example, and maybe even by unanimous consent. That would give us more time to legislate and give Members more time to spend in their States. But if we have to do this the hard way, we will. We are going to get the President's team in place.

So I guess Democrats have some decisions to make. I hope--I really hope--that they will come back to the table on the GENIUS Act, and I hope that they will cease their pointless obstruction of bipartisan nominees, but I guess we will have to see.

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