Lankford and Mullin on Democrats' slowdown of Senate confirmation process

It is not yet clear when members of the United States Senate will follow the lead of their colleagues in the House of Representatives and leave Washington for the traditional August work period. The House went on recess a week ago; the Senate was always scheduled to work this week, but a delay in confirming dozens of President Trump's nominees has forced GOP leaders to reconsider when to send members home. President Trump has urged Republicans to remain in the nation's capital in August in order to get more of his nominees on the job. Democrats are using the minority's ability to slow the process by demanding maximum debate time and no shortcuts with any nominations, even those with bipartisan committee support.

Here's what Senator James Lankford (R-OK) and Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) said about the situation in interviews earlier this week:

Lankford: "Right now, we're going to stay and get as many nominations done as we can get done. If Democrats continue to block nominations, we're going to continue to be able to stay here. It is typical in a July time period to be able to look at bipartisan nominations that have already come out of committee to say, we're going to pass 30, 40, 50, 60. President Trump had 70 during his first term that were passed by voice vote right at the end of July, that kind of opened up the opportunity to be able to take off during August time period. That hasn't happened so far from Democrats. So we're just going to keep staying until we actually get the nominations done. We have a backlog of nominees right now. At this point, under President Biden, 46 nominees had been passed by a voice vote. They were bipartisan. These were lower-level assistant secretaries at whatever the agency was, that were non-controversial folks. Democrats have blocked every single one of these. These are not the high-profile people. These are folks that are actually working within the agencies that have got to go through confirmation, not the cabinet secretaries, but literally folks that most Oklahomans have never heard of before, that are not controversial. Democrats are blocking all of them. We're going to make sure that actually, the president can get his staff, this is about trying to impede the president from doing his work by blocking him from getting his staff. We're just going to keep going to make sure that the president has the opportunity to be able to get his work done."

Lankford: "Now we're in a position where literally they're filibustering every single one of them. They're demanding the full two hours. They're demanding the slowdown of the process. So, we're just trying to say, hey, we're just going to keep working through August until we get these folks done. So, Democrats can either say, we're going to go back and be in our state during August time period, where we get a chance to be able to work, travel around the state, or we're going to continue to be able to work here."

How much more time are you spending on nominees because of the Democrats' tactics?

Lankford: "So, literally (a) nominee would take a minute instead of taking three hours, because if you bring it to the floor and do all of those steps, that's a three-hour process. There's about 1,200 nominees that have to be moved through the process. What happens is when you're moving nominees that slow, it blocks you from doing legislation. So, for instance, we're trying to get an appropriations bill on the floor this week--in fact, three on the floor. That's hard to be able to do when you've got nominees you're going to go through. We got the National Defense Authorization (Act) we still need to do when we get back in September, plus at least nine more bills for appropriations. If you're on nominations all the time, you can't get to those bills, as well. So, you've got to open up floor time to be able to do both. What's typically done is you advance through the easy-to-move-through nominations to open up floor time for the rest."

What sort of nominations are these?

Mullin: "So, we have ambassadors, we have guys on the bench, we have a bunch of nominees for DoD still. We have, I mean, the Department of Energy, Interior--there isn't anyone that doesn't have noms. We have about 160-ish that are reported out of the committee waiting on the floor to vote. The problem is, you know, if you compare where we were at in 2017 versus where we are today, we're more than twice ahead. As of right now, as I stand in front of you (Tuesday afternoon), we've confirmed 111. In 2017, at this same point, it was 55. So we're moving ahead. What's odd about this is that this is the first president in history -- President Trump, right now, Trump 47 -- It's the first president in history that has not had one single nom go by UC, or unanimous consent, or by a voice vote. They have filibustered every single nominee since Marco Rubio. Marco Rubio was a very first one. So, out of 111 confirmed, Democrats have chose to filibuster 110. And the fact that underneath Leader Thune's direction, because he said this from from the moment he took the leadership role, that the Democrats can either do this the hard way or the easy way; they chose to do it the hard way. Which is why we've cast more votes than any other Senate in 35 years, and we've been here more days than any Senate body in the last 15 years, just because the Democrats have chose to to to delay as much as they can President Trump's cabinet and, and nominees."

Mullin: "We're going to continue to work until either we get a deal where, with the Dems that they're going to allow us to have a bloc of bipartisan members. Not--we're not asking for contentious ones. We're not asking for ones that came out (of committee) on a partisan vote. We're saying, let's have a deal on the 55 that came out of committee in a bipartisan fashion and was reported to the floor. Either that or we're going to stay here and continue to vote. So it's up to them. As I said before, Leader Thune made it very clear we can do it the hard way, or we do it the easy way."

Why it's misleading to call the August time period a 'break' or 'vacation':

Mullin: "(It's the) one lengthy break that we're able to actually schedule surgeries, like hip replacements, knee replacements, shoulder replacements, you know, back surgery, neck surgery. It's to where a lot of people, Republicans and Democrats, schedule that during August because they have time to recover so they won't miss their work while they're up here. And so, I mean, that's, and for someone like myself, we have a lot of international travel that we're required to do. I mean, being on the committees that I'm on and the relationships I have abroad, those relationships are extremely important for our partnership with other countries, for economic reasons and for national security reasons, that those trips have to be made. And so a lot of people talk about, you know, August being a time of recess, but, geez, when we get back in September, I feel like I need a rest."