Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Thursday that Democrats will agree to votes on Gen. James Mattis for defense secretary and Gen. John Kelly for homeland security secretary on Inauguration Day, giving President-elect Trump two Cabinet officials on his first day in office.
Schumer said a vote on Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., President-elect Trump’s choice for CIA director, would be next on Democrats list, and could possibly come Monday. A few other non-controversial nominees could see votes next week, but most of the rest he said constitute a “swamp Cabinet” whose ethical challenges and hard-right positions deserve more scrutiny before they are allowed to join the administration.
Schumer also suggested that Elaine Chao, a former Labor Department secretary who is Trump’s pick to head the Transportation Department, could see swift confirmation next week. But the Democratic leader tried to knock down reports that retired surgeon Ben Carson was also set for a quick confirmation next week with Democrats’ unanimous consent.
Republicans’ argument that Carson “is not controversial” is wrong, Schumer said, because “he doesn’t know a thing” about housing.
Schumer and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., are negotiating which nominations can win swift approval and others who Democrats have pledged to use parliamentary tactics to delay.
Even though Democrats lack the votes to defeat a nominee, they have the power to delay their confirmation for weeks by failing to agree to unanimous consent agreements for quick votes and other procedural hurdles.
Republicans argue that Democrats are playing politics with their harsh scrutiny of Trump’s nominees and argue that President Obama had seven of his Cabinet picks confirmed on Inauguration Day.
Schumer rejected the comparison, reiterating his complaints that Republicans are “jamming” the nominees through before many of them have completed their Office of Government Ethics paperwork as a way to avoid more public scrutiny. The seven nominees that the Senate approved on Obama’s first day in office, he said, had all of their paperwork filed before their confirmation hearings so senators could scrutinize their records and financial holdings.
Schumer accused Republicans of “making a mockery” of the Senate confirmation process by pushing through the nominees either before their paperwork work was filed or only half a day afterward, in some cases.
Republicans are rushing to approve Trump’s Cabinet, he said, without giving senators, “and more importantly, the American people, a fair chance to questions and hear from these nominees.”
“The president-elect’s Cabinet is a swamp Cabinet full of billionaires and bankers – full of conflicts of interests and [ethical issues] as far as the eye can see,” Schumer said, standing in front of placards with photos of the Cabinet members in question and the hashtag #swampcabinet.
Earlier Thursday, Schumer accused Steve Mnuchin, Trump’s choice for Treasury secretary, of failing to originally disclose holdings in the Cayman Islands and other business interests.
He also took issue with the admission from Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., that he failed to pay $15,000 in taxes over the course of several years for the nanny for his triplets, and repeated his concerns over Rep. Tom Price’s stock trades in healthcare companies. Trump picked Mulvaney for Office of Management and Budget director and Price for Health and Human Services secretary.
