As Donald Trump continues to announce the people he will nominate to his cabinet appointments and other posts which have normally been given cabinet rank such as the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency it will be up to the United States Senate to confirm these people and the country and the world will see what the Senators are truly made of.
From an environmental point of view, the confirmation of Oklahoma Attorney General, Scott Pruitt, would be a disaster as reported this week in the The Economist. The man is clearly in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry and is bent on repealing Barak Obama’s landmark Clean Power Plan that obliges the States to move away from coal powered electricity.
The thing is that the U.S. Senate has the chance to stop this and other dangerous appointments that Trump has said he would make.
Simple Math
The law says that such high profile appointments require the confirmation of the U.S Senate. What this means in practice is a simple majority, or in the case of a filibuster, three fifths of the Senate must support the nomination.
The current Senate has 52 republicans and 46 Democrats and 2 Independents such as Bernie Sanders who normally vote with the Democrats. The Vice President presides over the Senate and can break a tie. Assuming the Democrats stay together, they will need to win over 3 republican Senators to block Trump’s nuttiest and most worrisome nominations.
Those three could be people such as:
- John Mcain – Senator from Arizona who has demonstrated himself to be an american patriot and expressed concern for the climate
- Rand Paul – Senator from Kentucky who has emerged as one of the sharpest critics of Trump after the election
- Marco Rubio – Senator from Florida with hispanic roots and plenty of reasons to withhold any and all support from Trump
All in all 11 Republican Senators chose not to support Trump for President or considered him unfit for office. If these people stand their ground they will force Trump to nominate more reasonable and centrist people to top posts in his cabinet and the government.
Time to fight
The other option is for the Democrats to fight trump with the same kind of tactics that Republican Senators used against Bill Clinton and Barak Obama when things did not go their way.
A filibuster is a delaying tactic in which Senators begin speaking on a topic and continue to do so for as long as they wish essentially blocking specific legislation or the confirmation of someone they feel is unfit for office. One senator can recognize someone with the same point of view essentially indefinitely. It takes three fifths of the Senators in the room (about 60) to end a filibuster thus the Democrats could essentially block all of Trump’s more questionable appointments such as Attorney General Pruitt.
The Democrats have elected New York Senator Chuck Schumer as minority leader and he has said he will work with the Trump administration in areas where they agree. Let’s hope he fights them where they do not!
One way or another we will see in the months ahead what these men and women, who in theory represent all the people in their States, are truly made of.