Starting at noon, the Senate will be in session all day, possibly past midnight, holding vote after vote on as many as 20 unconfirmed nominations made by the Obama administration. These will be procedural cloture votes that, thanks to Majority Leader Harry Reid’s prior invocation of the Nuclear Option, will only require 50 votes to pass.
A senior Senate Democratic aide said Democrats want to confirm about 20 nominees before adjourning for the year, including Vivek Murthy to be surgeon general. Republicans oppose Murthy because they believe he is unqualified and the National Rifle Association opposes him for supporting gun control policies.
Other nominees on the list who have also drawn Republican opposition include Anthony Blinken to be John Kerry’s deputy at the State Department; Sarah Saldana to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement; and Carolyn Colvin to head the Social Security Administration. The list also includes some ambassadors and about nine judges, the aide said.
The Democrats want all these people confirmed before they hand over control of the Senate to the Republicans next year, but some recalcitrant conservative senators, including Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah, refused to give their unanimous consent. They also blocked a vote scheduled for Monday on the so-called CRomnibus appropriations bill.
This shows that Mitch McConnell isn’t very good at his job.
The senior Democratic aide noted McConnell left the Capitol Friday evening apparently believing he had a deal with Reid to avoid a weekend vote-a-rama, telling reporters, “see ya Monday.”
“Senator McConnell left the Capitol apparently thinking there was a deal but his caucus rejected it after he left, while Senator Cruz took to the Senate floor to openly question Senator McConnell’s honesty and integrity,” the aide said.
I’m not going to worry myself about the difficulties the two parties are having passing this CRomnibus bill because it contains some horrible provisions that weaken oversight of megabanks and campaign finance limits. But the bigger picture is that the funding levels are higher and better targeted than they will be if this whole thing blows up and the GOP has to do it from scratch next year.
I guess the best outcome would be if Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) can get a vote on an amendment to strip out the crap that’s been inserted in this “must-pass” bill. If Ted Cruz inadvertently allows that to happen, more power to him.
