U.S Sen. John Cornyn (R) joined Senate Republican leadership to announce a renewed effort to overcome what they describe as an unprecedented Democratic obstruction of President Donald Trump's nominees.
At a press conference, Cornyn highlighted his role in leading a Senate rules change to address and improve the confirmation process.
"Last November 5th, President Trump won a historic second term of office, and the Democrats still haven't gotten over that yet," said Cornyn. "They have resisted each one of President Trump's nominees, forcing us to eat up invaluable floor time."
Cornyn declared that the Republican conference would no longer tolerate what he called a "blockade" of nominees.
"The Blockade ends today," he said.
The Republican senator plans to seek unanimous consent to pass a resolution that would allow the Senate to vote en bloc, together, on groups of nominees advanced by the same committee. The resolution was origninally introduced by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) during her time as chair of the Senate Rules committee.
"I will offer for unanimous consent a bill... that would provide a process to vote for a number of nominees en bloc, or together," Cornyn said. He expressed doubt that Democrats wouldn't support the resolution, even though it was previously authored by a member of their party.
"I predict, here and now, that they will block that effort to a bipartisian solution to confirm nominees on a reasonable basis," he assessed.
Cornyn, however, shared optimism that this initiative would clear a significant portion of the current backlog of Trump administration nominees, assuring that "by next Monday, I'm optimistic we're going to be able to confirm a large portion of the backlog."
