Wyoming U.S. Sen. John Barrasso, and the rest of the Republicans in the Senate, are not losing patience with what he calls deliberate “obstructionist” Democrats holding up President Donald Trump’s nominations for months on end.
They’ve lost it entirely.
Barrasso sounded off on the Senate floor Thursday on what he called an “unprecedented” effort by Democrats to put the process of confirming nominees in “procedural purgatory.”
He doubled down on the tactic Friday morning on the Cowboy State Daily Show with Jake Nichols, saying Democrats are having a temper tantrum over not being in power anymore in Washington, D.C.
“They hate the fact that they lost the election,” Barrasso said. “Well, we know why they lost the election. They have gone so far left, and they became the party of high prices and open borders.
“That didn’t just offend the people of Wyoming, that offended the people of America.”
He said the nomination of former Wyoming Game and Fish Department Director Brian Nesvik has been especially frustrating. He’s lined up to be the next director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Nearly four months after his nomination was passed out of a Senate committee with bipartisan support, it only came up for a vote and confirmation Friday.
Barrasso said Nesvik is eminently qualified, as are nearly all of Trump’s nominees. But whether they’re qualified for the job isn’t a consideration for Democrats, he said.
2 Hours Each
Under the Senate rules, each nominee can be debated for up to two hours on the floor before a vote is taken, Barrasso said.
With about 1,200 nominees overall and 160 still outstanding, Democrats exercising that on every one of them is something that’s never happened before, he said.
“The Democrats are debating everyone, and it has nothing to do with their qualifications for their jobs,” Barrasso said Friday. “This resistance movement, this Trump derangement syndrome — at first I didn’t believe it was real.
“It’s real. These people are just beside themselves with their hatred of President Trump. It’s wrong, and it’s misguided and it’s slowing down the process.”
With only 24 hours in a day, spending two hours on each confirmation means a lot of other national business isn’t getting done, said Barrasso, the No. 2-ranking Republican in the Senate.
The filibuster Democrats are employing has “never been used to this degree,” he said. “There’s always been some foot-dragging, but this is an escalation of more and more. The big difference to me between the Republicans and Democrats is Republicans want to grow the economy. … The Democrats want to grow the government.”
The question Americans should be asking is, if the Senate has to spend all this time on confirmations, what’s not getting done, he said.
“If you’re talking about these confirmations on the floor of the Senate, you’re not passing legislation,” Barrasso said. “Because, you can’t do both at the same time. There’s only so much time in the day, and if the Democrats want to delay everything, the rest suffers as a result.”
The Examples
Barrasso said he’s also taking to the floor Friday to elaborate how unprecedented it is that not a single confirmation has been done by a voice vote so far. A voice vote is a fast process of calling out “yea” or “nay.”
That’s usually employed with less consequential and important nominations, he said. This year, even those are being debated two hours each.
In his Thursday address on the floor, Barrasso called out some of those that should never require that much time. So far, Democrats have filibustered nominations for:
• Chief of protocol for the State Department
• Assistant administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency
• Assistant secretary for communications and information at the Department of Commerce
• Undersecretary of industry and security for the Department of Commerce
• Undersecretary for research and engineering at the Department of Defense
• Undersecretary for memorial affairs at the Department of Veterans Affairs
• General counsel for the Department of Agriculture
“Even positions that have never been subject to a roll call vote in the United States Senate have not been spared,” Barrasso said, adding the Democrats had “set a sad new standard.”
Greg Johnson can be reached at greg@cowboystatedaily.com.
