At the end of the day, if the pause on this is to say, well, let us wait 3 years and we will see if a Democratic President is elected and then we will want to talk about changing the rules on that, I do not see any particular enthusiasm…

If we are going to get back to actually operating, I would suggest that we actually get back to operating.

I would guess somewhere around 150 fewer than President Obama at this point, maybe more than that, that President Trump has put out than President Obama.

If the majority is serious about rules reform, we need bipartisan support.

What can be done to actually get us back to where we can have debate again.

The White House owes us a lot more people to be able to put through the nomination process, but even if they got here, we are not moving them at the pace that they actually need to be moved.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle seem willing to abdicate our advice and consent responsibilities and just act as a rubber stamp.

We should certainly do that.

Even 54 would be--that is a larger number of requests even for a cloture vote than the last four Congresses combined.

I think we should do it, and it is not just for this Congress.

We did not have a confirmed individual, so our farmers and ranchers had to wait for weeks.

I have yet to talk to a single person in the nomination process, for any task, that says, 'This is such a pleasant process.'

The Federal Agency Customer Experience (FACE) Act that Senator McCaskill and I have worked on has passed through the Senate already.

I think that is a problem, that we cannot supervise what we cannot see, and they cannot lead what they cannot see.

Now that does not seem like a radical concept to me, but for years I have worked with Census.

There are a couple of bills that are in the process of moving through right now.

So what Senator Heitkamp is saying is when you get stuck in some process, release the redheads on them.

We have to make real progress on this and it has been a great frustration.