About the resolution
How much time should the Senate have to debate most presidential nominees: 30 hours, or only two hours?
Context
The Senate has to approve about 1,200 to 1,400 executive branch appointments made by the president. These range from prominent ones like Attorney General and Secretary of Defense, to 1,000+ lower-level positions which nonetheless play an important behind-the-scenes role in crafting federal policy.
Currently, each nominee is allowed up to 30 hours of debate on the Senate floor, an amount of time frequently maximized in recent years by senators opposing a president’s nominations.
What the legislation does
Senate Resolution 50 would shorten that debate time from 30 hours to only two hours for the vast majority of presidential nominees. The exceptions would be for Supreme Court nominees, circuit court nominees, and …
Sponsor and status
116th Congress (2019–2021)
This resolution was introduced in a previous session of Congress but was killed due to a failed vote for cloture, under a fast-track vote called "suspension", or while resolving differences on April 2, 2019.
1 Cosponsor (1 Republican)
Position statements
What legislators are saying
“Senators Lankford, Blunt Resolution to Reduce Needless Delays for Senate-Confirmed Nominees Passes Rules Committee”
—
Sen. James Lankford [R-OK]
(Sponsor)
on Feb 13, 2019
“Senate Floor Address Of Sen. Patrick Leahy On The GOP Push To Change The Senate Rules To Ram Thru Trump Nominees”
—
Sen. Patrick Leahy [D-VT, 1975-2022]
on Apr 2, 2019
“Hyde-Smith supports rule change to smash democrat roadblock on trump nominees”
—
Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith [R-MS]
on Feb 13, 2019
History
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Apr 25, 2018
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Earlier Version —
Ordered Reported
This activity took place on a related bill, S.Res. 355 (115th). |
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Feb 6, 2019
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Introduced
Bills and resolutions are referred to committees which debate the bill before possibly sending it on to the whole chamber. |
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Feb 13, 2019
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Ordered Reported
A committee has voted to issue a report to the full chamber recommending that the bill be considered further. Only about 1 in 4 bills are reported out of committee. |
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Apr 2, 2019
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Failed Cloture in the Senate
The Senate must often vote to end debate before voting on a bill, called a cloture vote. The vote on cloture failed. This is often considered a filibuster. The Senate may try again. This was the first in what is expected to be a series of votes on a bill to shorten the time the Senate may debate most presidential nominees. Although this … |
S.Res. 50 (116th) was a simple resolution in the United States Congress.
A simple resolution is used for matters that affect just one chamber of Congress, often to change the rules of the chamber to set the manner of debate for a related bill. It must be agreed to in the chamber in which it was introduced. It is not voted on in the other chamber and does not have the force of law.
Resolutions numbers restart every two years. That means there are other resolutions with the number S.Res. 50. This is the one from the 116th Congress.
This simple resolution was introduced in the 116th Congress, which met from Jan 3, 2019 to Jan 3, 2021. Legislation not passed by the end of a Congress is cleared from the books.
How to cite this information.
We recommend the following MLA-formatted citation when using the information you see here in academic work:
“S.Res. 50 — 116th Congress: A resolution improving procedures for the consideration of nominations in the Senate.” www.GovTrack.us. 2019. March 21, 2023 <https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/116/sres50>
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Where is this information from?
GovTrack automatically collects legislative information from a variety of governmental and non-governmental sources. This page is sourced primarily from Congress.gov, the official portal of the United States Congress. Congress.gov is generally updated one day after events occur, and so legislative activity shown here may be one day behind. Data via the congress project.
