-9999

Floor Speech

I have been listening to my colleague from Texas. The part that he said a couple of times over the last several minutes was that he was looking for some sort of explanation as to why Democrats are doing what we are doing. So let me attempt to respond to them.

I can't help but observe that my colleague from Texas and Senate Republicans like to point out that Senate Democrats were proposing reforms to the nominations process in 2024--yes, just last year. That is not a secret. A formal proposal was introduced. The Senate Rules Committee, of which I was a member and am now serving as ranking member this session, held a public hearing on these issues just over a year ago. There have been bipartisan discussions about these issues going back years. Senate Democrats led a bipartisan effort in 2024 for changes that would take effect in 2025.

Now, why are those dates important? Because these proposals were made back when the outcome of last year's Presidential election was unknown, like that is the ultimate fair way to do it. That is the way to get bipartisan support. These ideas are good or not good; you support them or you don't support them regardless of who is President or which party is in power. Unfortunately, Senate Republicans, at the time, showed little interest in these reforms, not just last summer but even late into 2024.

I can't help but observe that, at the time, they were engaging in their own unprecedented obstruction and blockades of President Biden's nominees. One Senator, a Republican Senator, held up routine promotions at the Department of Defense for nearly a year--yes, I said the ``Department of Defense,'' by the way--and they were planning to use these same tactics if then-Vice President Harris had been elected President. But now that Donald Trump is back in the White House-- surprise, surprise--they are ready and set to make all of these changes immediately. The truth is, we shouldn't be in this situation. On that much, I guess, we do agree.

But I am not just talking about the process. I am not just talking about the process. Since the beginning of the second Trump administration, this Senate has been faced with an unprecedented number of highly extreme and unqualified, unfit nominees, many nominees whose stated goal is to dismantle the Departments and Agencies and programs which they are being nominated to lead. Meanwhile, this administration is unlawfully impounding funds, firing people in droves, and abolishing Agencies created by Congress--actions that, if this Senate and Congress as a whole was living up to its responsibility as a separate but coequal branch of government, this branch is supposed to be providing oversight and accountability that is so lacking by the majority.

Yet still, given all that, Senate Democrats have been willing to negotiate. We have been partners in good faith. There was even a bipartisan agreement on the table just before the August recess that we just returned from, a proposal that would expedite some of the less objectionable nominees. All the administration had to do was accommodate some reasonable requests--bipartisan requests, for that matter--from a number of Senators.

Now, that is the normal process. Presidents and administrations of both parties have cooperated with Senators from both parties for decades to ensure the confirmation of nominees. But Trump rejected that option just weeks ago. The President himself told Leader Schumer and Senate Democrats to ``go to hell'' before the recess. Those three words are the perfect summary of how this President views Congress. It shows his contempt for Congress. That is why we are in this situation when it comes to his nominees, many, again, of whom are extreme and unfit in so many unprecedented ways.

Talk about unprecedented. The way this administration is behaving is unprecedented. This is not normal. Now, it is clear that the President rejected a reasonable bipartisan agreement before the recess, and I appreciate my Republican colleagues' new interest in the 2024 proposal to reform the nomination process. So in that spirit of bipartisan cooperation, I think there is a very good chance that we can pass this with a very simple amendment to make the resolution effective January 20, 2029.

Nobody here knows who the President will be then. Nobody knows which party will control the White House or be in the majority in this body by then. Nobody can predict it, and that is exactly the point. If the rule is good, then let's do it not knowing who is going to be in power when it takes effect.

So I invite discussion and negotiation about the effective date in this resolution or, as my colleague from Texas suggested, maybe even revisiting the list of which nominees should require Senate confirmation. But this resolution doesn't even begin to discuss or address that.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source