Report: Senate Democrats plan to target eight of Trump's nominees
Senate Democrats plan to aggressively go after eight of President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees over the next few months, according to The Washington Post.
The incoming Senate Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer, D-New York, told Senate Majority Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky that Democrats plan to target secretary of state nominee Rex Tillerson, attorney general nominee Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama. They will likewise pushback on the nominations of education secretary nominee Betsy DeVos and Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-South Carolina, Trump’s pick to lead the Office of Management and Budget, the report 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 told the Post Sunday.
Schumer added that Democrats would “vehemently resist” attempts by Republicans to rush through confirmation hearings and the report said Democrats will try to stretch them out into March.
“If Republicans think they can quickly jam through a whole slate of nominees without a fair hearing process, they’re sorely mistaken,” Schumer said.
Democrats are also eyeing, the report said, Rep. Tom Price, R-Georgia, the nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services, as well as Mr. Trump’s pick to lead the EPA, Scott Pruitt, treasury secretary nominee Steve Mnuchin, and labor secretary nominee Andrew Puzder.
This comes as the 115th Congress is set to gavel in the new session on Tuesday. Next week, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is already planning to hold a hearing for Tillerson and the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold two days of hearings for Sessions.
The Post reports that Schumer told McConnell that Democrats want hearings lasting two days for each of the eight nominees on the Democrats’ list and they also don’t want no more than two Cabinet nominees sitting for their hearing in the same week.
