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Senators from both parties are frustrated over Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., and his blockade of more than 400 regular military promotions. Tuberville is withholding promotion in protest of the Army’s abortion policy.
Democrats run the Senate. But he did nothing to break the deadlock. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. did not set aside a few extra days here and there to quickly confirm some of the most important nominees. Democrats clearly enjoyed the politics of standoff, pointing to Tuberville as an obstructionist who endangered the country’s national security and undermined the army’s esprit de corps.
Meanwhile, some Republicans are angry at how far Tuberville is willing to go to block these promotions.
The Senate confirmed three key military promotions on Thursday. But there are still more than 400 promotions floating in the air.
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Therefore, a coalition of Democrats and Republicans are considering a parliamentary move to get at Tuberville and confirm his promotion relatively quickly.
Other outlets have reported this maneuver as a “rule change” or “new precedent” for the Senate. Some have compared the move to the Senate’s “nuclear option”. This is where the Senate lowered the threshold for breaking the filibuster to a simple majority on all Cabinet and judicial nominees (except the Supreme Court) in 2013. The Senate then implemented “Nuclear Option II”, which dropped a simple majority threshold to break it. A filibuster for SCOTUS nominees.
The process the senators are discussing is neither of those things. This is essentially a way to bypass Tuberville’s blockade by using the Senate’s “standing orders”.
The Senate uses “standing orders” in the same way that it relies on its “standing rules” and precedents to govern proceedings. Adopting standing orders is a way for the Senate to impose guidelines for handling a particular procedure. For example, the Senate used “standing orders” to create the Homeland Security Committee after 9/11.
Senator Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., arrives for a Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing on July 26, 2023. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)
In this case, the Senate wants to adopt a standing order to expedite the confirmation of a large batch of military promotions. Such a move would prevent the Senate from having to consider each nomination individually, requiring an overwhelming majority and wasting time voting.
The gist of the standing order is that it will allow the Senate – at the end of the process – to “collectively” confirm all nominees. In other words, the Senate will confirm a group of nominees in one fell swoop. The Senate may sometimes approve a list of nominees simultaneously by unanimous consent. But there is a problem with this. Ninety-nine senators could be in favor of confirming the entire slate. But all it takes is one objection and the Senate is deadlocked. That’s what Tuberville has done recently.
The Senate has confirmed some nominees by running the parliamentary net individually on each of the past two months. But it takes a lot of time. This is why the Senate prefers to confirm multiple non-controversial nominees at once. The Senate sometimes considers more controversial nominees individually if there is not widespread support for confirmation.
In this case it will work like this:
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Schumer will bring a standing orders resolution to the House to consider a group of stalled military promotions. The Senate must first consider the proposal. So Schumer would likely have to file a cloture to break the filibuster on the proposal to move forward. If Schumer introduces a standing orders motion and files a “cloture” to crack the filibuster on Monday, the Senate will vote on Wednesday to “invoke cloture” (end debate) on the motion to proceed. As per the rule, there must be an intervening day (Tuesday) before any cloture petition becomes ripe for consideration. So the Senate will vote on “moving forward” on the standing orders resolution on Wednesday. This requires 60 years.
If the Senate “calls a pause” on the motion to proceed on Wednesday, debate on the standing orders motion could potentially begin on Thursday.
At that point, Schumer would have to file cloture to end debate and break a filibuster on the standing order motion.
Therefore, he would have to file another cloture petition to end that filibuster. Schumer will likely do this on this hypothetical Thursday to save time.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., speaks during a news conference at the Capitol in Washington, DC, on April 17, 2023. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
According to the book, an intervention day is required in a cloture petition to end all debate on standing order resolution. Therefore it will not be cooked till Saturday. If the Senate gets 60 votes to break the filibuster, the Senate can proceed to adopt the actual standing order. It would require a simple majority and would probably come up on Sunday.
But wait, there’s more.
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All this process is done to establish a mechanism by which the Senate can quickly confirm the respective nominees.
The Senate must first move on to the list of nominations. What Schumer should then do is file another cloture petition to force a close debate on all of those nominees at once. So if Schumer does this on Sunday, the Senate could vote to end debate the following Tuesday (Monday is intervention day). But because these are the nominees, the Senate needs only a simple majority to end debate on that slate.
Therefore the Senate ended the debate on Tuesday.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., answers questions from reporters during a press conference regarding the Democratic Party’s shift to focus on voting rights at the Capitol on January 18, 2022 in Washington, DC Are. (AP Photo/Amanda Andrade-Rhodes)
The actual, simultaneous confirmation of the larger batch of nominees finally takes place on Wednesday. A simple majority is also required to adopt measures to confirm collective promotions.
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So, the process will likely consume nine days of the Senate’s time (including weekends). But it confirms the promotion of the nominees. And despite the time, it’s all relatively quick compared to the lengthy process of going through each nominee one by one.
Furthermore, Tuberville cannot block this move. He could delay it by forcing the Senate to jump through three hoops of cloture to break the filibuster. But if the Senate has the prescribed supermajority, it could overcome Tuberville’s hold and confirm these promotions.
