Nominations

Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, either today or tomorrow, we will confirm another nominations package, bringing the total number of the President's nominees confirmed this year to more than 400. That far exceeds the total confirmations of both President Trump's previous term and President Biden's.

It is an impressive number on its own, but it is particularly impressive when you consider the obstacles the Democrats have put up. I am not exaggerating when I say that President Trump's nominees have faced a historic level of obstruction from Senate Democrats.

When you look at this term, President Trump remains the only President on record not to have had a single civilian nomination confirmed by unanimous consent or voice vote.

Let me repeat that. President Trump remains the only President on record not to have had a single civilian nomination confirmed by unanimous consent or voice vote.

Democrats have required a rollcall vote on every single one of the President's nominations, an unprecedented level of obstruction in modern times.

Now, of course, Democrats would like you to believe that they have engaged in this historic level of obstruction because the President has put up, in the words of the Democrat leader, ``historically bad nominees.'' The only problem is a lot of these nominees have gotten Democrat votes on final passage. So either Democrats are voting for ``historically bad nominees'' or something else has been going on here. That something else looks a lot like petty partisanship.

It became abundantly clear, a while ago, that the real reason Democrats have been dragging out nominations for Assistant Administrator of the Office of Solid Waste and Director of the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement is nothing more than petty politics. Democrats cannot deal with the fact that the American people elected President Trump, and so they have engaged in this pointless political obstruction and revenge.

Republicans, however, have not been daunted. We have just kept plowing through confirmations, racking up an impressive number of hours in session and a historic number of votes in the process.

In September, we took steps to restore Senate precedent on largely noncontroversial Presidential nominees to ensure that no other President has to face the kind of petty partisanship President Trump has encountered.

When the American people elect a President, they expect that President to be able to get his or her team in place. That doesn't mean that Senators should never oppose nominations, but it does mean the nominations should not be held up for purely partisan reasons. Or, in the words of the Democrat leader, just a few short years ago:

That doesn't mean we don't disagree. But it does mean, when nominees are held up, opposed, or blocked--it's for a legitimate purpose, not for leverage in partisan games, to score political points at the expense of public safety.

Democrats have engaged in a lot of partisan games this year, but Republicans have just kept doing our jobs. I am proud of just how much we accomplished on nominations, and I look forward to continuing to get the President's team in place in the new year.

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