Senate Republicans are knocking Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for “unprecedented obstruction” of Trump nominees in a new video Wednesday.
The Senate Republican Communications Center points out in the video, which was provided exclusively to The Daily Caller, that Democratic filibusters on Trump nominees have forced a historic number of cloture votes in the Senate.
The motion for cloture is a tool to limit debate on nominees, and is typically used to end a filibuster or other procedural techniques used by the opposition to delay or block a nominee.
During his first two years in office, President Donald Trump’s judicial and executive nominees have faced 128 cloture votes. Comparatively, just 12 nominees faced cloture votes during President Barack Obama’s first two years. (RELATED: Democrats Will Filibuster Gorsuch Nomination)
That means Trump’s nominees have faced more than 10 times the number of cloture votes than Obama’s nominees.
“For the past two years, Senate Democrats have engaged in systematic, unprecedented obstruction by delaying qualified, uncontroversial nominees,” the video states.
WATCH:
Trump’s nominees have also faced five times as many cloture votes than his six predecessors in their first two years combined:
Trump: 128
Obama: 12
George W. Bush: 4
Clinton: 8
George H. W. Bush: 0
Reagan: 0
Carter: 0
The Senate GOP video blames the “trend” of delay tactics against nominees on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, noting that Schumer said he is “proud” to be the “leader” of the filibuster movement in 2003.
Cloture typically requires a 2/3 majority vote in the Senate, but former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid temporarily revised the rule in 2013 to allow a simple majority to invoke cloture — known as the nuclear option. Republicans opposed the “nuclear option” when it was proposed, and Sen. Mitch McConnell warned Reid that he would “regret” the rule change. McConnell, now the Senate Majority Leader, is using the nuclear option to speed up Trump nominees.
Despite attempts from Democrats to obstruct Trump nominees, the president has broken a record for the number of appeals court judges confirmed during the first two years of a presidency.