Republicans change Senate rules to speed nominations as leaders trade charges of hypocrisy

Source: Washington Post

Politics
Republicans change Senate rules to speed nominations as leaders trade charges of hypocrisy

By Paul Kane
April 3 at 4:10 PM

Senate Republicans unilaterally changed the rules Wednesday governing presidential nominations, a bitter escalation of the long-running dispute over the rights of the minority in a chamber once hailed for its bipartisan nature.

The move, on a largely party-line vote of 51-to-48, will ease the confirmation process for President Trump’s nominees to sub-Cabinet positions in federal agencies. The Senate is poised to make the same change later in the day to speed judicial nominees at the district court level.

The move exposed raw emotions delivered in highly personal terms between the two sides, particularly an angry exchange between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.).

“He started this whole thing,” McConnell said just before the final vote, glaring at Schumer and blaming him for a decision 18 years ago that was one of many steps toward Wednesday’s actions.

Moments earlier, Schumer accused the GOP leader of wanting to turn the Senate into a “conveyor belt” to approve Trump’s nominees and admonished Republicans for allowing McConnell’s “debasement of the Senate.”

Under previous Senate orders, these nominees used to require 30 hours of debate after they had cleared an initial procedural vote. Now, such nominees will receive just two hours of formal debate before a final confirmation roll call.
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Paul Kane is The Washington Post's senior congressional correspondent and columnist. His column about the 115th Congress, @PKCapitol, appears throughout the week and on Sundays. He joined The Post in 2007. Follow https://twitter.com/pkcapitol

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/republicans-change-senate-rules-to-speed-nominations-as-leaders-trade-charges-of-hypocrisy/2019/04/03/86ec635a-5615-11e9-aa83-504f086bf5d6_story.html

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