Another change would exempt hundreds of less senior executive branch nominees from Senate confirmation votes.
In exchange, Republicans did not even get a promise that Democrats will not change the rules on executive branch nominees with a 51-vote strong-arm maneuver in the future.
WASHINGTON — President Obama's executive branch nominees continued to cruise through the Senate on Thursday, including his controversial pick to be labor secretary, Thomas E. Perez, as Republican anger over a deal to avoid a weakening of the filibuster seeped into the open.
"The president's been treated very fairly on both his judicial branch nominees and his executive branch nominees, and we continue to treat them fairly".
They block qualified executive branch nominees to restructure entire executive branch departments.
So far they are poised to approve all of his incompetent executive branch nominees.
They block qualified executive branch nominees to force wholesale changes to laws.
Instead, they block qualified executive branch nominees to circumvent the legislative process.
It is a troubling trend that Republicans are willing to block executive branch nominees even when they have no objection to the qualifications of the nominee.
"We've had up and down votes on executive branch nominees without a single filibuster from 1949 until the end of the Carter administration," Merkley added.
Tester was one of the Democratic Party's most vulnerable incumbents this year, but he surprised progressives with his frequent opposition to Trump's executive and judicial branch nominees.
