Reid’s rule change can be credited with securing confirmations for at least fourteen nominees, including Richard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; Melvin Watt, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency; John Koskinen, commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service; Janet Yellen, chair of the Federal Reserve Board; and three D.C. Circuit judges.
But the process grinds on slowly.
Much of what the Senate does requires a vote of “unanimous consent” to move forward. The minority party can block that by forcing a cloture vote, even when it knows it lacks the necessary 51 votes to block a nominee.
One way to measure the childishness of such maneuvers is to note the disparity between cloture vote and final confirmation. Thirteen times since the rules change, GOP senators have forced a cloture vote on a judicial nominee who ended up winning unanimous approval on confirmation. That means even the person who blocked unanimous consent ended up voting to confirm. For instance, the March 5 vote to end debate on Timothy Brooks, a district court nominee in Arkansas, was 59-41. Under the previous rule, which required 60 votes to break a filibuster, Brooks’ nomination would have halted right there. Under the new rule, 59 votes was more than enough to proceed to a vote on the nomination itself, which passed unanimously. That means all 41 senators who voted to block a confirmation vote—all of them Republicans—deemed Brooks sufficiently qualified to confirm. They just wanted to delay. A mere four Republicans who were going to vote for Brooks anyway voted in favor of cloture.
via The end of the filibuster? Not quite | MSNBC.