The only place the minority voice is always protected, in our entire system, is the Senate.
It was supposed to be somewhere you have to come together and consider these diverse
interests in our vast society.
It is the balance wheel in our system.
It is supposed to function as a check on the President, working with presidents, but also
checking them.
It's supposed to counter the sort of passions of the House, and it's not just a majoritarian
institution.
The Senate's built to move very slow, but it allows for that ongoing debate.
That's a good thing, until it's get abused.
And right now, it's being abused.
I think it's been declining, not just a few years, but 25 years.
We talk about filibusters quite commonly.
And the Senate started out, as an institution of unlimited debate.
There were no rules.
In the 20th century, it was decided that unlimited debate was unworkable, that there had to be
some way to cut off the debate.
So Senate Rule 22 is this rule that no one's heard of, but everyone's heard of, because
everyone's heard of the filibuster.
The cloture vote was set up to basically stop debate.
I think Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and they're trying to hold the floor, and you
wanna be able to figure out, "Okay, everyone's ready to vote, but you," then you would have
a cloture vote.
Basically, with 60 people, I could force a stop on debate.
If you get 60 votes at that point, then the amount of time after cloture is limited,
and you know you're going to get to a conclusion at some point.
Some people argue, as Senator Lankford has, that, uh, there's too much time post-cloture.
It's interesting to watch just the history of the past several decades, for what happens
with the executive nominees.
In the past, uh, for executive nominees, they passed by a voice vote.
Over the past couple of decades, that's changed.
If you go back through two decades ago, it took about 50 days, uh, for any candidate
to be able to move through the process.
Then during President Obama's time, it took about 60 days.
Now it takes 82 days, uh, to be able to move, as far as an average candidate.
Ah, if you look at just the cloture vote, that's demanding extra time to debate someone,
that's happened about 50 times in this Congress.
If you take the previous four Presidents combined, cloture votes were requested 15 times total.
It just was unheard of.
When the Senate worked, the Senators and the leaders practiced what we think of as forbearance.
They didn't push it to the limit.
The rules arguably worked because the Senators restrained themselves.
But when people don't restrain themselves, whether it's the leaders or the individuals,
then the rules don't work.
So what's happening now is, the minority is saying, "Well, we want 30 hours of debate
for everybody."
Well, with 1,100 people that have to go through the process from the executive calendar, you
can't get it done in a President's time period.
Literally the President will never get his staff, if you require 30 hours of debate for
all 1,100 people.
In many of the agencies now, a year and a half into the President's, uh, term, there's
no decision maker there.
It's slowing down everything in, in the Federal government.
So I think the Senators are frustrated.
So I do think the rules could be rethought.
In 2013, Republicans and Democrats came together, and said we're at an impasse that needs to
be fixed for the long-term benefit of the country.
The resolution was two hours for District Court judges, eight hours for almost everybody
else, except for Supreme Court, Circuit Court, and Cabinet, they would still be 30.
That was a simple, bipartisan resolution.
I've taken that exact same text again, that was agreed in a wide bipartisan majority,
more than 70.
But it was, uh, what was called a "standing rule."
It would only last 2013 and 2014, during that session of Congress, and then it would sunset.
I've introduced Senate Resolution 355 to try to deal with the issue of the nomination
backlog.
Let's just make it permanent from here on out, on how we're actually gonna resolve this
issue about nominations.
While Senator Lankford's Resolution is well-intended,
I don't think it's the right solution
to the problem.
We need a comprehensive review of the rules, that doesn't occur in the middle of a session.
The new rules would take, uh, effect prospectively, at a time you don't know who the President's
gonna be, and you don't who the's gonna control the Senate.
I've tried to figure out how to get us out of this hole that we're in currently.
One of the things that I've said to Senate colleagues is this is a problem that's not
just for now, it's gonna be a problem from here on out.
The Senate can change, and it can be the balance wheel of our system again.