WaPo: Senate Dems planning "unprecedented" obstruction of Cabinet nominees. Public Advocate to oppose one potential nominee
Eugene Delgaudio, president of Public Advocate responding to the Washington Post report: "Public Advocate plans on defending conservative nominees of the Trump Administration and has at least one potential nominee of the Trump Administration it will announce opposition to on Thursday, January 5 at 12 noon. This candidate is not on any final list of "one" yet and we hope to prevent that with our announcement Thursday. Repeating, Public Advocate is not at this time opposing any final nominee. "
From Hot Air and Washington Post:
Remember when Democrats insisted that incoming presidents had to get immediate confirmation of Cabinet appointments for the good of the nation? What a difference an (R) makes ... The Washington Post's Ed O'Keefe reports on a plan by Senate Democrats to "slow walk" confirmation of Donald Trump's appointments, including an insistence on nor more than two confirmations a week:
(Washington Post)
Democratic senators plan to aggressively target eight of Donald Trump's Cabinet nominees in the coming weeks and are pushing to stretch their confirmation votes into March - an unprecedented break with Senate tradition.
Such delays would upend Republican hopes of quickly holding hearings and confirming most of Trump's top picks on Inauguration Day. But Democrats, hamstrung by their minority status, are determined to slow-walk Trump's picks unless they start disclosing reams of personal financial data they've withheld so far, according to senior aides.
Hot Air
So who's on tap for the slow-walk strategy? It might be better to ask who's not. According to O'Keefe, Democrats don't plan to slow down two of the generals nominated for Trump's Cabinet, James Mattis and John Kelly. That's a shift from the murmuring last month that Trump was relying too much on military leaders in the next government, but the relative popularity of both appointments probably persuaded Democrats to keep their powder dry. Also, slow-walking national security appointments would have made this exercise considerably more dangerous, not just politically but also in terms of our war efforts.
For everyone else, Chuck Schumer wants two full days of hearings and witnesses, with unlimited rounds of questioning, apparently based on whether the minority wants to keep going or not. They also want enough spacing between hearings by multiple committees that it would take almost two months to confirm the incoming Cabinet - two per week for nineteen posts that have Cabinet rank, at least in Barack Obama's administration. That would be a curious arrangement for approval by a Senate Majority Leader, and a far cry from how Congress acted eight years ago, as McConnell's spokeswoman recalls:
(Washington Post)
"It's curious that they'd [Democrats] object to treating the incoming president's nominees with the same courtesy and seriousness with which the Senate acted on President Obama's nominees," Antonia Ferrier, a McConnell spokeswoman, said in an email. "Our committees and chairmen are fully capable of reviewing the incoming Cabinet nominations with the same rules and procedures as the same committees did with President Obama's nominations."