In theory, bundling nominees together could force senators to vote “yes” on the whole package despite reservations over individual nominees, but Thune committed to removing any name with a GOP hold on it and already struck a “couple” from an initial batch that could be approved next week.<\/p>\n

“You know, somebody described it as the bad apple example,” Thune told the Washington Examiner<\/em>. “There’s always going to be a bad apple, and I’m not saying that necessarily, that there are, but there are also times in which you have senators who, for one reason or another, are trying to get the attention of the White House, a particular agency or department of government, and this is one of the ways that in the Senate you’re able to do that. So we don’t want to diminish or minimize our colleagues’ opportunity to do that.”<\/p>\n

The guardrail came out of rolling conversations centered on how to change Senate rules to break the Democratic delay on virtually all of President Donald Trump’s nominees. Thune convened a working group to hash through different proposals, from shorter debate time to fewer procedural votes, and settled on batch voting with input from his conference.<\/p>\n