Roy Blunt: “in the last vote today we established a new precedent. The rules of the Senate are a combination of the rules of the…”

“in the last vote today we established a new precedent. The rules of the Senate are a combination of the rules of the Senate, the standing orders of the Senate, and the precedents of the Senate. Senator Lankford and I had hoped to do this with a permanent standing order that basically would have put the Senate exactly where the bipartisan vote was in 2013, which included my vote, to have the same kind of rules that we are encouraging now. This process is designed to speed up not only nominees for Republican Presidents but also nominees for Presidents who are Democrats. In the last 2 years, we have seen an extraordinary use of every tool available to the minority. The Senate is designed to be a place where the minority is heard. In fact, at one time, any Senator could stop everything forever, and when Senators started doing that to excess, that rule was changed. The protections of the minority often have to be looked at again when the minority abuses those protections. That is what has happened in this case. Now we have 2 hours of debate on the nominee we are debating right now. If we hadn't just taken the vote we took that overruled the Chair, we would have 30 hours of debate. I guarantee that there will not be 2 hours of debate about this nominee. There may not be 2 minutes of debate about this nominee if we see what we have seen happened in the last 2 years.…”