The Senate left town last week, its work unfinished. Majority leader Mitch McConnell's partial government shutdown continues. Among other things, Republicans still refuse to take up many of Barack Obama's judicial and executive-branch nominations, a roadblock that makes it hard for the courts and the federal government to work efficiently.
Jennifer Bendery at HuffPost describes one particularly embarrassing example: The undersecretary of the Treasury in charge of the terrorism and financial crimes division hasn't been confirmed. Adam Szubin was nominated in mid-April, more than seven months ago. Republicans don't oppose him. Bendery reports that the Banking Committee chairman, Richard Shelby, praised Szubin at his confirmation hearing. And then? Nothing.
The Senate has confirmed 135 Obama nominees (including both executive branch and judicial) so far this year. By contrast, in 2007, when Democrats had just won the Senate and a Republican president was in his seventh year in office, the Senate had confirmed 234 of George W. Bush's nominees through the end of November.
Only 10 judges have been confirmed this year, leaving 66 judicial vacancies. The last time judges were confirmed so slowly was in the 1950s, during Dwight Eisenhower's presidency.
So this isn't the normal partisan back-and-forth. This isn't what Democrats did to Bush, or what Republicans in 1999 did to Bill Clinton, or what Democrats in 1987 did to Ronald Reagan. It's new, it's a big deal, and it's terrible.
If McConnell's Republicans want to defeat the nominees they believe are poor choices they have a right to do so.
And it's fine if the Senate uses confirmations as leverage over the executive-branch bureaucracy and as a weapon in fights with the president over policy.
Republicans won Senate elections. They've earned the influence the Constitution gives them over the confirmation process.
But this isn't a Senate that is using this influence to govern. It's a Senate engaged in pure partisan harassment of Obama and indifferent to the smooth functioning of government.
Editorial on 11/24/2015