Republicans move to speed confirmation of Trump nominees

Senate Republicans took a first step Wednesday to speed up the confirmation process for most of President Donald Trump’s nominees, in a swipe at alleged Democratic obstruction.

The GOP-led Senate Rules Committee approved procedural changes on a 10-9 party-line vote that would limit debate time to two hours for most nominees once cloture is invoked. Under current rules, the post-debate time is 30 hours.

Prior to the Rules Committee vote, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) decried a “crisis” on the Senate’s executive calendar — not with judicial nominations, but with positions that remain unfilled within the executive branch.

“The real crisis here is the administration itself below the cabinet level has an enormous number of vacancies,” McConnell said. “Once we get to cloture on a number of these nominees they aren’t even controversial. So it’s pretty obvious the whole purpose is just to eat up floor time.”

Democrats rejected the charges.