The elimination, obviously, of the 60-vote protection, except for the Supreme Court, was done by a Congress controlled by Democrats.

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

We should certainly do that.

We have to determine how we are going to do this.

Let us make it permanent and say this is how we are going to continue to function.

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

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.

we are gaining muscle memory that every nominee... we are going to still go through the cloture.

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.

The blue slip issue is, quite frankly, a great conversation piece.

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.

We have to be able to solve it.

We are not engaging on the issues.

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

It is clear that this is being used to slow down the other work of the Senate and for no other purpose.

My state does expect me to vote.

I literally took the exact same language as 2013, removed the sunset, and said this becomes permanent.

The American people are frustrated with Washington gridlock. They believe that we cannot get even the simplest of things done.

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

We need to fix this. We need to restore the process to what it once was, and I believe this is an opportunity to do this.

It took about 50 days during the Obama administration, and it took about 30 or 40 days during the Bush administration time and during the Clinton administration.

Losing that time period is a great loss to the American people.

cloture still should not be used--and his term was--except in extraordinary circumstances.

Dual tracking is something that has been done by the Senate by unanimous consent before.

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…