The Senate next week intends to confirm its fifth batch of President Trump’s nominees through the en bloc process that Sen. John Thune inaugurated last year for non-major posts. The latest list of 74 names includes future ambassadors to Australia, Brazil and Equatorial Guinea, along with assistant secretaries, judges for the District of Columbia, and officials at agencies such as the National Credit Union Administration Board.
Assuming this tranche goes through as expected, the Senate will have used the method to fast track 375 of Mr. Trump’s nominees since September, when Mr. Thune led Republicans to change the chamber’s rules for group consideration. That will amount to about 63% of total civilian Senate confirmations so far in the second Trump Administration. It is an encouraging figure—not because the Senate has suddenly discovered efficiency, but because it shows how much of its confirmation machinery was needless make-work. Over the long haul, this procedural streamlining will benefit the executive branch and the public far more than it benefits a chamber addicted to delay.
The point is not to preserve the Senate’s opportunity to obstruct. It is to end the fiction that every ambassador to Belize or board member at Amtrak deserves to become a miniature legislative crisis. More than 1,000 positions require confirmation, and a minority party that can use each one as an opportunity for delay is not exercising noble oversight. It is converting routine administration into a permanent vacancy machine. The supposed right to confirm has become the right to stall.
The en bloc process cannot be used to confirm cabinet secretaries or federal judges, all of whom still require individual attention from the Senate. That limitation is not a virtue. It is the remaining evidence that the old bottleneck survives wherever the chamber can impose it. If the Senate can responsibly process 74 names together, it can acknowledge that the Constitution does not require a separate ritual of procrastination for every appointment.
Frustrated with Democratic dilatory tactics, Mr. Trump has demanded that Congress simply adjourn and let him fill vacancies through recess appointments. Senate Republicans declined, surrendering the most direct remedy to the confirmation backlog. They should reconsider. Recess appointments would not be an abdication of power; they would be an honest admission that the Senate has abused the power to advise and consent by treating delay as its principal advice. The question is not whether housing and spying czar Bill Pulte wants another brass nameplate for his collection. It is whether the country wants functioning agencies or an ever-expanding display of empty offices.
Mr. Thune’s approach is working, but it is only the first crack in a needless sieve. The Senate has proved that batches of noncontroversial agency subordinates can move quickly when it chooses. The next step is to stop pretending that the chamber’s failure to act gives it a permanent veto over the executive branch. If the Senate will not confirm, the President should fill the vacancies—and leave the Senate to explain why its cherished check on executive power was really just a check on government itself.
