The incoming top Democratic Senate leader took issue with President-elect Trump’s decision to tap Dr. Ben Carson to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development, calling the retired neurosurgeon a “strange fit” because he has no housing experience.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who will succeed retiring Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. as the Senate minority leader in January, said he has “serious concerns” about Carson’s nomination and said he and other Democrats plan to ensure that he is fully vetted during his confirmation process.
“Someone who is as anti-government as him is a strange fit for Housing Secretary, to say the least,” Schumer said in a statement Monday afternoon. “As he moves through the confirmation process, Americans deserve to know that their potential HUD Secretary is well versed in housing policy and has a vision for federal housing programs that meet
the needs of Americans across the country and seeks to provide access to those that we haven’t reached already.”
Democrats lack the votes necessary to block a nomination but have pledged to use the Senate’s parliamentary delaying tactics to ensure that Democrats have enough time to scrutinize and question the nomination — a process that also will eat up precious time on the legislative calendar.
Carson spent part of his childhood living in public housing in Detroit, part of a rags-to-riches story that conservatives and other admirers tout.
But critics of the Trump appointment, such as Amy Liu, the director of the Metropolitan Policy Program and the left-leaning Brookings Institution, say the powerful personal story doesn’t make up for the lack of knowledge about housing needs of high-poverty areas and how deeply they intersect with other related issues, such as racial tension with police.
“There’s a lot of anxiety now, because this election was about the heartland versus the coastal elites; we’re going to need a HUD secretary who governs both,” Liu told the New York Times. “When I think about what HUD is going to have to deal with next, it’s going to be the future of high-poverty neighborhoods, and how to deal with that not only in Baltimore but also Ferguson.”
