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THREAD The handwringing from the Left* on today’s Senate procedural changes is utter nonsense. (*Bracket the Right’s concerns about the procedural precedent and focus on what is being substantively changed.) 1/
In lay terms, all the Senate is doing is establishing that, once district court or (most) sub-Cabinet nominations have been open to debate for 2 hours, a final vote will occur (absent unanimous consent for more time). That’s it. 2/
Today, the nominations are open for debate for up to 30 hours. Now it will be 2 hours. How many hours are needed? The easiest way to figure that out is to say, well, how many hours have typically been used to debate these types of nominations? 3/
Guess what? The answer is … something less than 15 minutes. That’s the typical amount of time senators usually take to debate district court nominations, and it’s often ZERO minutes of debate. They just vote. 4/
IN FACT, up until 2003 (when I did my historical research b/c of the Schumer campaign against Estrada), there had only been a handful of *recorded votes* EVER on district court nominations. Confirmation was by voice vote, often en bloc. 5/
As a Senate counsel, I read a lot of the Cong Record on this question. You can’t see exact time stamps, but I’m pretty confident that there’s never been more than 2-3 hours of actual floor debate EVER on a district court nomination. *Maybe* once or twice. 6/
Certainly it’s true that at NO point in U.S. history have Senators actually debated a federal district court nomination for anything NEAR 30 hours. 7/
Okay, you say, but debate might be really important. What if a true Monster is being nominated and only one Senator can see s/he was a Monster and desperately wants to make a case against that nomination? 8/
Easy solutions. Remember there are MONTHS ahead of the final vote (pre-nomination, pre-hearing, hearing, time to mark-up, then time until floor consideration is scheduled). 9/
During all that time, senators can speak on the Senate floor (and elsewhere) and argue against a nomination. They are NOT limited to the “post cloture debate time” impacted here. Nobody is being silenced. 10/
More importantly, if a senator actually wants to debate a nominee and needs more time, s/he’s going to be able to get unanimous consent to make the case, as long as the UC request is in good faith. That’s just Senate culture. 11/
What we have here is a norm restoration. We had a situation where Democrats used the 30 hour standard to block any other Senate business from taking place. Senate Rs are just restoring the traditional floor consideration of district court nominations. 12/
Obviously the minority always wants to chew hours off the Senate calendar. That prevents more confirmations, and it prevents time for legislation. The minority lost an obstruction tool, not debate opportunity itself. Not in any real world way. 13/
The practical effect here is that mostly non-controversial nominations will now get votes because more time is available and the Senate will be more productive. This is great for the courts and even more important for the sub-Cabinet nominations. 14/
It will also make time for consideration of the handful of legislative vehicles that are likely to be considered and passed this year (e.g., the Defense Authorization bill). When Congress really starts working again legislatively, this will matter a great deal. 15/
For now, I’ll sidestep the Qs re when the Senate should use its constitutional rulemaking authority via majoritarianism, and what today means as precedent. Nor am I engaging on alternative ways the Senate could have gone. (Sorry RB/JW/BD/EW.) 16/
My emphasis is that no actual debate time was lost, and that the new system is a restoration of norms that long governed. In fact, it moves things more to the minority’s advantage versus the pre-2003 norms, but let’s just call it Restoration. 17/END
P.S. I am going to go coach my son's soccer team now.
