The Republican controlled Senate dragged its feet confirming judicial nominees during President Obama's first term more often and for longer periods of time than it had during the first terms of his three immediate predecessors, according to a report issued today by Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Warren's report draws a line from the beginning of Obama's presidency up to his nomination in March of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court as a replacement for the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Republicans have opposed a nomination hearing for Garland, saying it should be left to the next president.
The Senate confirmed 173 first-term district and circuit court nominees for Obama, 205 for President George W. Bush, 200 for President Bill Clinton, and 192 for President George H.W. Bush, the report says. Warren says the GOP waiting game is "preventing government from functioning properly."
"The idea that Senate Republicans are willing to leave our highest court short-handed for nearly a year seems shocking," Warren said in a statement. "But the fact is that, for more than seven years, they have waged an unrelenting campaign to keep key positions throughout government empty."
Warren's report also cites a 2012 Congressional Research Service report that found that a majority of Obama's nominees took at least 200 days to confirm, as opposed the former norm of fewer than 100 days.
That rate slowed further in 2015, when the GOP took over the Senate, according to the report, when Congress approved only 11 judges, the smallest number in 46 years.
The report also faults Republicans for stalling Obama's executive nominees. From 1980 to 2013, the GOP filed cloture motions on 79 judicial nominees—43 of them under Obama.
Warren's report cites confirmation delays for, among others, Attorney General Loretta Lynch (166 days), Acting Treasury Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Crimes Adam Szubin (unconfirmed since April 2015), and former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel—the first secretary of defense nominee to be filibustered in Congress.
