WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate left Washington Saturday evening for its monthlong August recess and not using a deal to advance dozens of President Donald Trump’s nominees, calling it quits after days of contentious bipartisan negotiations and Trump posting on social media that Senate Democratic Chief Chuck Schumer can “GO TO HELL!”
With out a deal in hand, Republicans say they could attempt to change Senate guidelines once they return in September to hurry up the tempo of confirmations. Trump has been pressuring senators to maneuver shortly as Democrats blocked extra nominees than ordinary this yr, denying any quick unanimous consent votes and forcing roll calls on each, a prolonged course of that may take a number of days per nominee.
“I think they’re desperately in need of change,” Senate Majority Chief John Thune stated of Senate guidelines Saturday after negotiations with Schumer and Trump broke down. “I think that the last six months have demonstrated that this process, nominations is broken. And so I expect there will be some good robust conversations about that.”
Schumer stated a guidelines change could be a “huge mistake,” particularly as Senate Republicans will want Democratic votes to move spending payments and different laws shifting ahead.
“Donald Trump tried to bully us, go around us, threaten us, call us names, but he got nothing,” Schumer stated.
The newest standoff comes as Democrats and Republicans have step by step escalated their obstruction of the opposite occasion’s government department and judicial nominees over the past twenty years, and as Senate leaders have incrementally modified Senate guidelines to hurry up confirmations — and make them much less bipartisan.
In 2013, Democrats modified Senate guidelines for decrease courtroom judicial nominees to take away the 60-vote threshold for confirmations as Republicans blocked President Barack Obama’s judicial picks. In 2017, Republicans did the identical for Supreme Courtroom nominees as Democrats tried to dam Trump’s nomination of Justice Neil Gorsuch.
Trump has been pressuring Senate Republicans for weeks to cancel the August recess and grind by dozens of his nominations as Democrats have slowed the method. However Republicans hoped to make a take care of Democrats as an alternative, and got here shut a number of occasions over the previous few days as the 2 events and the White Home negotiated over shifting a big tranche of nominees in alternate for reversing a number of the Trump administration’s spending cuts on international assist, amongst different points.
The Senate held a uncommon weekend session on Saturday as Republicans held votes on nominee after nominee and because the two events tried to work out the ultimate particulars of a deal. Nevertheless it was clear that there could be no settlement when Trump attacked Schumer on social media Saturday night and instructed Republicans to pack it up and go residence.
“Tell Schumer, who is under tremendous political pressure from within his own party, the Radical Left Lunatics, to GO TO HELL!” Trump posted on Fact Social. “Do not accept the offer, go home and explain to your constituents what bad people the Democrats are, and what a great job the Republicans are doing, and have done, for our Country.”
Thune stated afterward that there have been “several different times” when the 2 sides thought that they had a deal, however in the long run “we didn’t close it out.”
It’s the primary time in current historical past that the minority occasion hasn’t allowed at the least some fast confirmations. Thune has already stored the Senate in session for extra days, and with longer hours, this yr to attempt to affirm as lots of Trump’s nominees as attainable.
However Democrats had little want to offer in with out the spending lower reversals or another incentive, though they too have been wanting to skip city after a number of lengthy months of labor and bitter partisan fights over laws.
“We have never seen nominees as flawed, as compromised, as unqualified as we have right now,” Schumer stated.
