Open Letter From Conservative Leaders: The Senate Needs to Confirm President Trump’s Nominees

The Senate Needs to Confirm President Trump’s Nominees

October 10, 2017
Washington, DC

As President Trump approaches the end of his first year in office, his ability to implement his agenda across the executive branch has been hindered by the Senate’s failure to confirm his nominations.

Under unified government, President Trump has still faced a slower pace of confirmations than that of Presidents Bush or Obama, both of whom had nearly half of their nominees confirmed by this time in their respective terms. Specifically, President Bush had 358 of his 610 nominations cleared. President Obama had 341 out of 505 nominations confirmed. Currently, President Trump has only had 161 confirmations of the 398 individuals nominated.

The slow pace of Senate confirmations is exacerbated by the Senate’s continued insistence on working no more than 2 ½ days a week – arriving on Monday evening for a handful of votes, and departing, on average, by 2:30 p.m. each Thursday afternoon.

Previous Senates worked harder. The Reid Senate of 2009 averaged a departure time of 6:15 p.m. every Thursday, and oftentimes stayed as late as 11:30 p.m. to finish their work. In fact, the Reid Senate of 2009-2010 spent nearly 2,500 hours in session, compared to the McConnell Senate of 2015-2016, which spent just 1,855 hours in session.

Also troubling is the Republican insistence that Democrats are “obstructing” votes on these nominations, as claimed in a recent press release from the Senate Majority Leader’s office. It is unclear what obstruction is taking place. Democrats no longer have the ability to filibuster any nominees, judicial or executive. Any simple objections they do make – such as running all post-cloture time – are simply process objections that can be easily overcome.

Moreover, if Democrats are going to insist on all post-cloture time to be run, Majority Leader McConnell can easily make this painful for them by forcing continuous session overnight and through the weekend. If the Senate stayed in session continuously for a week (including the weekend), they could confirm up to five nominees every week even if Democrats made them run the full post-cloture time on each nomination.

Democrats may be able to delay consideration of nominees for a short time, but they ultimately can no longer obstruct. In the absence of the filibuster, the fate of every nominee rests solely with Majority Leader McConnell and the will of the GOP conference to do the necessary work.

Personnel is policy. In delaying the confirmation of President Trump’s appointees, the Senate is directly limiting the President’s effectiveness. This is not only true because positions remain vacant and work is not being accomplished, but because without the direction of Trump’s political appointees, career officials are left unsupervised. As has been documented in many instances, career officials that disagree with the President have taken measures to actively thwart his priorities.
 
Furthermore, continued delay results in ongoing unanswered partisan attacks designed to tarnish the personal and professional reputations of the president’s nominees. Both Russell Vought, nominated to the Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Amy Coney Barrett, nominated to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, have been subject to scurrilous attacks by Democratic senators who have attempted to link the faith of Vought and Barrett to their qualification for office. Not only is this an unconstitutional religious test, but such statements subject both Vought and Barrett to unwarranted and offensive criticism to which they cannot give a robust response. Other nominees are being unnecessarily delayed because Republican Senators failed to appear at committee meetings where the nominations were to be voted upon, forcing cancellation of the committee’s action on the nomination.

The Republican Senate should prioritize these nominations and others like them. Vought and Barrett are both immensely qualified for the positions to which they’ve been nominated, and the GOP should confirm them swiftly, not only because of their excellent credentials, but also as a definitive answer to the Democrats who are attempting to place a religious test on appointed office. Deputy Labor Secretary-nominee Patrick Pizzella is highly qualified and yet the GOP has failed to move his nomination. These are just a few of the stories of President Trump’s nominations languishing in the Senate.

The Senate plays a critical Constitutional role in helping the President shape and implement his priorities by passing legislation, but also by confirming the President’s nominations. We urge the Senate to take its role seriously, and act with haste to confirm the individuals that President Trump has selected to assist him in carrying out his mandate.

To that end, the Conservative Movement calls on the Senate leadership to IMMEDIATELY schedule committee and floor action every Thursday and Friday for the foreseeable future to act on President Trump’s nominees for executive and judicial nominees, and to begin working a full week, EVERY week, until all nominations have been acted upon.

The United States Senate behaves as though there are no time limits and no urgency to these matters.   They are wrong and we cannot overstate the frustration and growing concern with the Republican Senate leadership for its failure during this entire year to do its work, process the nominations and address the issues that the American people have elected and pay them to handle.

The Honorable Becky Norton Dunlop
Chairman, Conservative Action Project
Former White House Advisor,
President Ronald Reagan 

Colin A. Hanna
President
Let Freedom Ring

David Bozell
President
ForAmerica

Sherri R. Martin
Executive Vice President
The Martin Organization, Inc.

Shawn A. Mitchell
National Chaplain
National Federation of Republican Assemblies

Evelio Silvera
Campaign for the American Future

The Honorable Jim DeMint 
U.S. Senate
Former Member, South Carolina

The Honorable Tony Perkins
President, Family Research Council
President, Council for National Policy

The Honorable T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr.
Chief Assistant to President Reagan
For Domestic Affairs 

Carrie L. Lukas
President
Independent Women’s Forum 

The Honorable David McIntosh
Former Member, Indiana
U.S. House of Representatives 

Kathleen A. Patten
President & CEO
American Target Advertising, Inc. 

Belden Bell
Co-Chair Heritage Legacy Society
The Heritage Foundation 

Rick Manning
President
Americans for Limited Government 

Austin Ruse
President
C-Fam  

Richard Wright
Owner
R & S LLC 

Kelly Shackelford
President / CEO / Chief Counsel
First Liberty Institute 

Samuel B. Casey
Managing Director & General Counsel
Jubilee Campaign 

Frank J. Gaffney
President
Center for Security Policy 

Heather R. Higgins
President and CEO
Independant Women’s Voice

Bob Carlstrom
President
The Carlstrom Group, LLC

Christopher Malagisi
Editor in Chief
Conservative Book Club

Ron Robinson
President
Young America’s Foundation 

Ralph A. Rebandt II
Senior Pastor, Chaplain 
Oakland Hills Community Church
Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police 

Kevin Freeman
Founder
NSIC Institute 

Kay R. Daly
President
Coalition for a Fair Judiciary

Judson Phillips
Founder
Tea Party Nation  

Phil Kerpen
President
American Commitment 

Michael J. Bowen
CEO
Coalition For a Strong America 

Mark Fitzgibbons
President fo Corporate Affairs
American Target Advertising, Inc. 

Sandy Rios
Director for Governmental Affairs
American Family Association

David Martin
Health Care Entrepreneur
Cleveland, Ohio

Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D.
Washington Bureau Chief
Infowars.com 

Janice Shaw Crouse, Ph.D.
Board Chair
Institute on Religion and Democracy

Robert K. Fischer
Meeting Coordinator
Conservatives of Faith 

Phillip Leo Jauregui
President
Judicial Action Group 

Sara M. Olson
Senior Vice President
Concerned Women for America 

Peter Bohlinger
Managing Member
Pacific Apartment Homes, LLC 

Mario Navarro da Costa
Director, Washington Bureau Tradition,
Family, Property

The Honorable Donald Devine
Former Director of the U.S. Office of 
Personnel Management under
President Ronald Reagan 

Penny Pullen
President, Life Advocacy
Resource Project   

Eunie Smith
President
Eagle Forum

Lewis K. Uhler
President
National Tax Limitation Committee

Tim Macy
Chairman
Gun Owners of America

John F. Tate
President
America’s Liberty PAC

Mike Spence
Founding President
Conservative Republicans of California

Jerry Melvin
President
Florida Republican Assembly

Gerrye Johnston
Founder / CEO
Women for Democracy in America, Inc.

Richard A. Viguerie
Chairman
Conservative HQ 

Quin Hillyer
Veteran
Conservative Columnist

Becky Gerritson
President
Wetumpka TEA Party (AL)

Ralph Schmidt
Director
God’s Embrace Ministries

Tim Daughtry
Author
Daughtry & Company

Ed Martin
President
Phyllis Schlafly Eagles

L. Martin Nussbaum
Attorney 

Cleta Mitchell, Esq.

(All organizations listed for IDENTIFICATION purposes only)