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Floor Speech

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Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor having just listened to the minority leader talk about the nominations the President has made to fill out the positions in government. The U.S. Senate has standards, we have customs, we have long-established traditions, and these include allowing a President to fill out the team he needs for the government to function.

These traditions go all the way back to George Washington. So let me remind the Senator from New York about how the Senate functions--is supposed to function--before he and those with this Trump derangement syndrome have come to the position that the country shouldn't be allowed to function, because exactly 235 years ago this week, the Senate used its advise and consent powers, and they used them for the first time.

President George Washington nominated Alexander Hamilton to be the Secretary of the Treasury. The Senate confirmed him immediately. The official Senate history says:

Minutes later, perhaps even before the messenger returned to the President's office, senators approved [Hamilton] unanimously.

That has been the standard for more than two centuries. Senate Democrats have now, under Chuck Schumer, trashed this tradition of the U.S. Senate. Confirming even the most routine nominees is now a long and bitter fight.

From Hamilton's confirmation in 1789 to Schumer's unprecedented obstinate obstruction going on today, the Senate has gone from speed to stalemate.

Prior to Senator Schumer trying to shut down the Senate and shut down the confirmation process, routine nominees cleared the Senate Chamber quickly by voice vote, by unanimous consent, and often in groups.

More than half of every President's nominees were confirmed that way until this year; 90 percent or more of a President's nominees were confirmed by voice vote or unanimous consent from the days of George Washington all the way through the Presidency of Barack Obama.

During President Trump's first term, Democrats cut it down to 65 percent. Now during the second term, it is zero. Absolutely zero of President Trump's nominees have been confirmed by unanimous consent or voice vote. Not a single nominee has been confirmed that way since President Trump took office almost 8 months ago.

President Trump is the first President in U.S. history to not have a single nominee confirmed by voice vote or unanimous consent. Not one. Never happened before in the history of the United States. Maybe Chuck Schumer is proud of that. Maybe he is going to use it around with the Democrats and the far-left wing of his party who continue to be radical, extreme, dangerous, and scary and don't want this country heading in the right direction, but it is a disgrace what he has done to the U.S. Senate.

This is the Schumer confirmation shutdown. He and the Senate Democrats are forcing the Senate to waste hundreds of legislative hours because they have filibustered each and every one of President Trump's nominees, every single one.

Mr. President, 109 sub-Cabinet nominees have been confirmed this year. Democrats filibustered every one of the 109, and that calls for two separate rollcall votes with 2 hours in between set aside for debate. Now, of the 109 nominees, in those 2 hours that were set aside for each one of those 109, 81 of them not a single word was spoken by the Democrats on the floor about any of them.

Chuck Schumer just came to the floor, and he said: These nominees are not qualified. But he didn't say anything about when any of these 81 actually came to the Senate floor; when we voted, through cloture, and then waited 2 hours for the Democrats, they talked about other things. They didn't talk about the nominees. If they are so bad, why didn't they talk about them?

The average amount of time of all of these sub-Cabinet nominees spent by the Democrats: 2 min 12 seconds. Eighty-one of them, they said nothing. Only seven of them did they talk about for more than 10 minutes. If they are so bad, why aren't they talking about them? Because these people are qualified.

But they were delayed for no reason other than the Trump derangement syndrome. Each one has been confirmed after maximum amounts of time have expired. That is time that should have been spent on legislation. But, no, the Democrats don't want us to be able to legislate.

Is what they have done advise and consent? No. Is it congressional oversight? No. Is it serious scrutiny? No. It is obstruction on autopilot. That is what we are seeing in this body by those Democrats, led by Chuck Schumer, the ``king of the shutdown.'' No President has ever faced a total shutdown of nominees like President Trump has under the Democrats and Chuck Schumer.

This has resulted in a historic backlog. Today, 149 qualified, ready- to-serve nominees are still waiting to be considered here on the Senate floor, and they are stuck in Senate purgatory.

Now, we know these nominees are qualified, despite what Senator Schumer said on this floor just a couple of minutes ago. How do I know they are qualified? Well, the FBI has vetted each and every one of them. The Office of Government Ethics has reviewed each and every one of them. The Senate committees who held hearings heard from all of these nominees, and they were all voted successfully out of committee.

And now let me just point out to Chuck Schumer that over half of them earned bipartisan support with Democrats voting for them in the committee. Yet, here on the Senate floor, Senate Democrats are stonewalling their consideration.

And there are still more than 800 nominees and nominations and positions in our government that still need to be filled. So, this week, Senate Republicans are going to restore these longstanding traditions of the Senate to get back to the way the Senate is supposed to work.

Nominees who have been successfully approved by Senate committees will now be considered and confirmed in groups. This is keeping with the longstanding traditions of how this body operates. The Republican plan is similar to one that was proposed by Senators Klobuchar and King in 2023.

At the time, they said that they were facing obstruction. Sixty-two percent of Joe Biden's nominees had been confirmed by unanimous consent or voice vote. So this updated process applies only to the routine executive branch decisions. This is pretty simple. We are talking about positions like Deputy Secretaries, Assistant Secretaries, Deputy Assistant Secretaries, Ambassadors, and hundreds more. These are the positions that in the past have never required a rollcall vote on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

America needs these men and women working, not stuck in some procedural traffic jam. The process of Cabinet-level and judicial nominees remains the same. They are going to continue to come to the floor individually for debate, discussion, and votes. These rule changes will get the Senate working again, doing the business of the American people.

Eight months now into President Trump's second term, only 12 percent of President Trump's team is in place.

Now, remember, modern Presidents have over a thousand positions to be filled. At this pace, it would take over a thousand additional hours of Senate time on the floor to fill it.

No Senate, Democrat or Republican, has ever operated this way. No President, Democrat or Republican, can govern efficiently under the current abuse by the Democrats.

The Schumer confirmation shutdown leaves critical jobs unfilled in our government. That weakens our economy. It undermines our international diplomacy. It jeopardizes our safety. It disrespects the will of the voters. This rules update will clear this backlog of nominees, and it will allow us to scrutinize nominees effectively and confirm qualified nominees efficiently.

Committees are still going to hold hearings. They will still question the nominees. There will still be all of the background work, and then the FBI checks will still be done. The Office of Government Ethics will still review the conflicts. None of that changes. What changes is this pointless partisan delay right here on the Senate floor.

What we are doing today is restoring the Senate's constitutional responsibility. That responsibility is advice and consent, not stall and delay. President Trump was elected to get America back on track. He deserves to have his team on the job and so do the American people. Senate Republicans are committed to making the Senate work again just as it has for every President up until now.

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