The end of the year typically is a time for the Senate to come together and clear the decks of presidential nominees that have stacked up awaiting confirmation.

This is not a typical year.


After months of bruising political battles, and ahead of a presidential election, many Republicans are in no mood to confirm President Barack Obama’s picks for lifetime judicial appointments — or even more routine executive branch nominees.

Nineteen potential judges, a half-dozen ambassadors, a terrorism financing specialist and two high-ranking State Department nominees are awaiting confirmation votes on the Senate floor, a backlog that has this GOP-led Senate on track for the lowest number of confirmations in 30 years. The Senate Banking Committee hasn’t moved on a single nominee all year.

“The American people are paying the price,” said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) this week.

For the GOP, there’s little political incentive to help out a lame-duck administration, especially when Republicans hope to take back the White House in 2016, and install their own picks. Overall, the caucus is united in trying to slow confirmations to a trickle: Opposing the president is often an easy way to increase party unity.

But things can turn on a dime during end-of-the-year deal making, which currently includes a massive tax package, a spending bill and the nominations imbroglio. After waiting five months for a vote, Judge Luis Restrepo is now on track to be confirmed to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in January after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell set up a vote on Wednesday evening, and in a matter of minutes eight lower-tier ambassadors were confirmed.

That action came as some Republicans began joining Democrats to push McConnell to help get their preferred judges or ambassadors confirmed, in a nod to presidential prerogatives and Senate tradition. But any moves to confirm Obama’s nominees is viewed with suspicion by the party base, senators said privately, so McConnell has only used his power as leader to force a vote on one nominee: Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

McConnell’s reluctance to force votes on nominees is the primary reason for the backlog, and vacancies in the federal courts are the most glaring example. The odds-on bet is few if any will be approved by the end of the year. Without agreement between party leaders, the White House would have to completely restart the confirmation process for those nominees next year. Meanwhile, there are currently 30 so-called judicial emergencies — jurisdictions where case backlogs are stacking up because of a judge vacancy. At the beginning of the year, there were 12 such vacancies.

Republicans “want to play politics with the one branch of government that shouldn’t be political,” said Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. “It’s outrageous, it’s hurting the country, it is hurting the independence of our country’s judiciary.”

The United States has been without an ambassador to Mexico since July, a glaring omission that’s turning into an intraparty feud on the Republican side. Roberta Jacobson enjoys broad support among Democrats and Republicans, but presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) refuses to allow a quick vote on the floor because of her work normalizing relations with Cuba, which presents a difficult choice for McConnell.

Jacobson’s supporters run the gamut from the leader’s chief deputy, John Cornyn of Texas, to Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker of Tennessee and Jeff Flake of Arizona. Negotiations to vote on her are ongoing, if unlikely to bear fruit, but the blame game has already started.

Democrats are dinging McConnell for covering for Rubio, while Cornyn says he offered Jacobson opponent Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) a deal to give him time to criticize Jacobson if the New Jersey Democrat would agree to a floor vote. Cornyn said Menendez instantly rejected the offer.

“There’ll be a wrap-up that includes various nominations,” Cornyn said. But Jacobson is “problematic because some senators feel very strongly about it.”

A spokeswoman for Menendez said the senator “has no influence over the Senate Republican caucus strategy as it relates to President Obama’s nominees and, as he said to Mr. Cornyn, he has no interest in engaging in hypotheticals.”

Indeed, confirming Jacobson this year may make little tactical sense despite the importance of her position. If forcing a vote on her annoys Rubio or any other senator who opposes her, it could complicate efforts to move a number of lower-level nominations that may be able to pass easily: A single objection is all it takes to kill a big deal on nominees.

Corker and Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) are working to approve several more ambassadors plus key White House picks like Thomas Shannon to be the top State Department official for political affairs and Brian James Egan to be a top lawyer at State. Egan already faces an objection, registered by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).

“We have maybe as many [as] 20 nominations that are noncontroversial that we think we can get through before the end of the the year,” Cardin said. “We have another five to 10 that, for various reasons, can be considered difficult.”

The ambassadorial logjam eased significantly on Wednesday afternoon, but Cardin conceded that Jacobson is “a long shot.”

Individual judicial nominees can be just as touchy. Democrats have been pillorying Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) for not doing more to confirm the popular Circuit Court nominee Luis Restrepo — this week he wrote a letter to McConnell pleading for a vote. And in an interview, Toomey said he’s done all he can do at this point to confirm Restrepo, who hasn’t budged for five months.

“I’m doing what I can,” Toomey said. “I’m confident we’ll get this done.”

Hours later, McConnell scheduled a vote, evidence that some of the nomination freeze is thawing as the holidays loom. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) for months blocked nearly all civilian nominees, angry first over Democrats gutting the filibuster on nominations two years ago, and then because Obama threatened to veto the National Defense Authorization Act. But that bill has been signed, and McCain has begun moving nominees through his panel, holding a hearing Wednesday on four key military positions.

And Corker was able to persuade Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to release his hold on USAID Director Gayle Smith, perhaps the biggest individual triumph for the president since Lynch’s confirmation. Cardin threatened to force Cruz to object to her nomination on the Senate floor; shortly thereafter, Cruz lifted his hold.

But in other instances, the political inertia of the Senate is tougher to overcome. Adam Szubin, who was chosen by Obama in April to serve as the undersecretary for terrorism and financial crimes at the Treasury Department, has been stalled in committee for months. He would be the point person in the Obama administration to track the finances of well-funded Islamic State terrorists.

Though Szubin currently serves in that position in an acting role, Democrats argue that he needs the imprimatur of a Senate confirmation vote to give his voice more weight during international negotiations. But that nomination has gotten bogged down in the residual fallout over the Iran nuclear deal as well as questions about an extension of the Iran Sanctions Act, and a committee vote on his nomination that had been scheduled in early November was abruptly called off.

Szubin is just one of more than a dozen nominees mired in the Senate Banking Committee, which has the dubious distinction of being the sole Senate panel that has not cleared a single administration nomination this year.

“There are substantive complaints about none of them. There is opposition based on their history, record, qualifications to none of them. It’s all about Obama,” said Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, the top Democrat on the Banking Committee. “And because they don’t like the Iran nuclear agreement, we shouldn’t confirm somebody who will make us safer?”

A frustrated Brown took to the Senate floor Wednesday to force a confirmation vote on Szubin and a host of other nominees stuck in his committee. The panel’s chairman, Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, swiftly objected to each of Brown’s attempts.

“That’s a policy decision,” Shelby said Wednesday of the nomination of Szubin, whom Shelby called “eminently qualified” during his confirmation hearing in September. “You know, he’s probably a nice guy in all this. But there is a lot of dissent in our caucus on that.”

Asked whether Szubin could move through his committee soon, Shelby responded: “We’re not going to vote now. We’re going home for Christmas.”

