Geez that’s disgusting, which begs the question why McConnel is not taking The Senate back to A Simple Majority like it has always been?
I heard the other day at the rate they are obstructing it would take 11 1/2 years to get them all confirmed. It’s simply outrageous.
You know, the way they held them up, who knows if they have gotten the 30 hours of debate done for each of them, to be able to proceed to a simple up or down vote, after procedural changes. This from fas shows how they can delay the simple up and down as well-
Nominations reported by a committee are placed on the Senate’s Executive Calendar,16 and must lay over one day before the full Senate may act on them. A simple majority vote, a quorum being present, is required to confirm a nomination, but, if there is significant opposition, supporters of a nomination may first need to win a super-majority vote to end debate (60 votes) before the simple majority confirmation vote can take place.
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41872.pdf
And sadly, the Congress over the years have given themselves more power over the process than was originally intended says various law experts, from the same link-
Others have said that the Senate should allow the President greater leeway in his choices for office than is currently the case. For example, law professor John C. Eastman told the Senate Rules Committee on June 5, 2003, that
... the appointment power is located in Article II of the Constitution, which defines the powers of the President, not in Article I, which defines the powers of the legislature. As the Supreme Court itself has noted, by vesting appointment power in Article II, the framers of our Constitution intended to place primary responsibility for appointments in the President. The “advice and consent” role for the Senate, then, was to be narrowly construed.3
The practice of the Senate, however, has not systematically reflected either of these perspectives. Historically, the nomination and confirmation of presidential appointments has been regulated not by strict, formal rules, but rather by informal customs that can change (and have changed) over the years, as the relative balance of power between the President and the Senate ebbs and flows. It is these customs which form the process, according to appointments expert Michael J. Gerhardt.
These informal arrangements—those not clearly required or clearly prohibited by the Constitution—have come to define the dynamic in the federal appointments process. The informal arrangements through which the system operates—including senatorial courtesy; logrolling; individual holds, “blue slips;” consultation between presidents, members of Congress, and other interested parties, including judges; interest group lobbying; strategic leaking by administrations, senators and interest groups; manipulation of the press; the media’s effort to influence the news; and nominees’ campaigning—are the sum and substance of the federal appointments process. Studying these arrangements provides even
greater illumination than studying Supreme Court decisions or the Constitution itself of how the different branches of the federal government interact on matters of mutual concern.4
Under these informal customs, individual Senators have, historically, been deeply involved in the nomination and confirmation process. The procedures and traditions that have developed have tended to protect the autonomy of individual Senators to choose how to fulfill the advice and consent role, rather than to dictate the process for all Senators.
It is this combination—unwritten Senate traditions and the protection of each Senator’s rights— that has led critics to call for changes in the legislative branch’s process. “[T]he Senate’s confirmation process is entirely consistent with all of its other norms, traditions and rules. Concern for the rights and prerogatives of individual senators gives rise to numerous opportunities for obstruction and delay,” argued political scientists Nolan McCarty and Rose Razaghian.5
