Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell leads a pack of colossal wasters of time.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
threatened further filibuster reform over ongoing Republican obstruction and foot dragging on Tuesday, and is keeping up the drumbeat.
I confess I've never seen some Senators work so hard to do so little. My GOP colleagues have exerted effort to cause nothing to get done.
— @SenatorReid
Jennifer Bendery at Huffington Post has
done some of the math to show how extreme this problem is. In the six months since Senate Democrats voted to end the filibuster for presidential nominees, Republicans have wasted 126 hours of Senate time in forcing "debate" on the candidates.
Since December 2013, when Democrats changed the rules so that it only takes a simple majority to advance a president's nominees—instead of the previous 60-vote threshold—Republicans have voted to block 30 of President Barack Obama's nominees whom they ultimately ended up voting for. Thirteen of those nominees were even confirmed unanimously. […]
Ever since December, when a nominee makes it to the floor, Republicans have routinely denied Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) their "unanimous consent" to begin debate, which means Reid has to use a more time-consuming process to move forward with each nominee. With consent from Republicans, a nominee could come up for a vote straight away. Without consent, Reid must schedule a debate on a nominee and wait for an intervening work day to pass. After that, each nominee gets anywhere from two to 30 hours of allotted debate time. Democrats typically concede their half of those hours, while Republicans run out the clock on their portion without actually debating the nominee.
The net effect, though, is that Republicans are voting to confirm the same nominees they're delaying for hours, days or even weeks at a time.
There's no principle involved here. It's just a prolonged hissy fit over the fact that Reid took action to bring to an end at least some of their unprincipled obstruction. Clearly, there's going to be a minimum of cooperation from Republicans. Just as clearly, further filibuster reform—is necessary.