John Cornyn: “I appreciate, as always, the courtesy of our colleagues. Earlier this week, we confirmed Mrs. Betsy DeVos as the next…”

“I appreciate, as always, the courtesy of our colleagues. Earlier this week, we confirmed Mrs. Betsy DeVos as the next Education Secretary, and last night--finally, at long last--we confirmed Senator Jeff Sessions to be the Attorney General of the United States. That represents the eighth nominee to the President's Cabinet who has been confirmed. At this point in the Obama administration, there were 24 Cabinet members confirmed. So, obviously, we are way behind in terms of giving the President the team he needs in place in order to start his administration and advance the country's policies. We will move after today to the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary, Dr. Tom Price, and then to the Treasury Secretary, Mr. Mnuchin. The handwriting of course is on the wall. We all know each of these nominees will be confirmed. How do we know that? Because, thanks to the former Democratic leader, who invoked the nuclear option changing the Senate rules, only 51 votes are necessary to confirm a nominee since there is no filibuster, strictly speaking, no 60-vote requirement for nominees. So my question is this: What purpose is to be served by dragging all of this out? Unfortunately, what this does is it uses floor time, which is a valuable and limited resource here in the Senate. It prevents us from turning to bipartisan legislation that would actually help the American people. That is a real shame.…”