Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Senate Democrats to target 8 Trump picks
secretary.
There’s also Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services and oversee changes to Obamacare, who is set to be attacked by Democrats for his support for privatizing Medicare. Andrew Puzder, a restaurant executive set to serve as labor secretary, will face scrutiny for past comments on the minimum wage, among other policies. Steve Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs partner set to serve as treasury secretary, and Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, Trump’s pick to lead the EPA, will also be the focus of Democratic attacks, aides said.
“President-elect Trump is attempting to fill his rigged cabinet with nominees that would break key campaign promises and have made billions off the industries they’d be tasked with regulating,” Schumer said in a statement Sunday confirming his caucus’ plans. “Any attempt by Republicans to have a series of rushed, truncated hearings before Inauguration Day and before the Congress and public have adequate information on all of them is something Democrats will vehemently resist. If Republicans think they can quickly jam through a whole slate of nominees without a fair hearing process, they’re sorely mistaken.”
Senate confirmation hearings are scheduled to begin next week, when the Judiciary Committee is set to hold two days of hearings with Sessions, and the Foreign Relations Committee is scheduled to hold a one day, two-part hearing with Tillerson.
But Schumer has told McConnell that he wants at least two days of hearings for each of these eight nominees, including at least one panel made up of witnesses that can speak to the pick’s past record, aides said. At each hearing, members of the committee would get at least 10 minutes to ask questions.
Democrats also want hearings for each of these eight nominees to be held on separate weeks, with no more than two Cabinet picks sitting for a hearing in the same week.
That would mean that hearings for Tillerson and Marine Gen. James Mattis, the defense secretary pick, could happen in the same week, but not the hearings for Price and Mulvaney, aides said.
That’s already not set to happen, and Republicans have scoffed at Schumer’s proposal, noting that the New York senator went along in 2009 when the Senate unanimously confirmed seven of President Barack Obama’s Cabinet nominees on Inauguration Day and five more later that week.