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Senate Republicans are getting closer to changing the upper chamber’s rules to allow for a slew of President Donald Trump’s lower-level nominees to be confirmed, and they’re closing in on a revived proposal from Democrats to do it.
The hope among Republicans is that using a tool that Senate Democrats once considered would allow them to avoid turning to the “nuclear option,” meaning a rule change with a simple majority vote.
“The Democrats should support it, because it was their original proposal that we’re continuing on,” Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., told Fox News Digital. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if they won’t. This historic obstruction by the Democrats is all playing to their far-left liberal base, who hate President Trump.”
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Senate Republicans are eyeing a Democratic proposal from years ago to change the Senate’s rules to ram President Donald Trump’s nominees through Senate Democrats’ blockade. (Aaron Schwartz/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Republicans met throughout the week behind closed doors to discuss their options and have begun to coalesce around a proposal that would allow them to take one vote to confirm a group of nominees, also known as “en bloc,” for sub-Cabinet level positions.
So far, the only nominee to make it through the Senate with ease was Secretary of State Marco Rubio in January. Since then, various positions throughout the bureaucracy have stacked up and have not received a voice vote or gone through unanimous consent — two commonly-used fast-track procedures for lower-level positions in the administration.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said that before Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., was in charge of the Democrats, “this was always done in a way where, if you had some of the lower-level nominees in the administration, those were all voted en bloc, they were packaged,…
