Providing for Expedited Consideration of Certain Nominations--Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, because of the heavy fires that are blazing in New Mexico, our colleague Senator Udall cannot be here because he is out there dealing with forest fires. He has an amendment he has filed to S. Res. 116, the bill now before us in the Senate, and on his behalf, I will be calling it up. It is amendment No. 522, and I want to take a couple of minutes to explain the amendment.

Mr. President, basically the amendment is very simple, and I will read it in its entirety:

The second undesignated paragraph of paragraph 2 of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate is amended to read as follows:

Is it the sense of the Senate that the debate shall be brought to a close? And if that question shall be decided in the affirmative by three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn--except on a measure or motion to amend the Senate rules, in which case the necessary or affirmative vote shall be two-thirds of the Senators present and voting--then said measure, motion, or other matter pending before the Senate, or the unfinished business, shall be the unfinished business to the exclusion of all other business until disposed of.

And this is already rule XXII. Here is the part that Senator Udall would amend:

On a nomination to an Executive Branch position requiring the advise and consent of the Senate, the necessary affirmative vote shall be a majority of the Senators duly chosen and sworn.

So the Udall amendment, of which I am a proud cosponsor, would basically say on executive branch nominations that come before the Senate that when debate is brought to a close there would not need to be 60 votes. You could have an affirmative 51 votes and that measure would pass, that nomination would be passed by the Senate. So, therefore, we would not need the supermajority of 60 votes to pass a nominee.

Again, it comes as no surprise to Members of the Senate that Senator Udall and I have worked together to try to reform the rules to reduce to an absolute minimum, if not get rid of entirely, the filibuster. Well, it is obvious we never accomplished that, but it seems to me as we are changing the rules here on changing the policy on how we are going to deal with nominees--and I think this is long overdue--this is the proper time to address this point, that on a nomination to an executive branch, it ought to be 51 votes, not 60 votes. So that is what the amendment does. It basically says on a nomination that it only requires 51 votes to pass the nomination and not 60 votes.

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