President Trump has his economic right-hand man in place.
The Senate voted Monday evening to confirm Steven Mnuchin, a former investor, banker and Trump campaign official, to be the 77th secretary of the treasury. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., was the only Democrat to vote with Republicans, and the nominee was confirmed 53-47.
Confirmation means that Mnuchin will be in a position to help carry out Trump’s ambitious agenda for cutting tax rates, lessening financial regulation and revamping trade agreements.
The treasury secretary is the top economic post in an administration, and Mnuchin’s swearing-in will go a long way toward filling out Trump’s understaffed Cabinet and, potentially, facilitating the president’s legislative agenda.
Before he was confirmed, Mnuchin had to wait out a Senate Democratic effort to slow down most of Trump’s nominees, an opposition tactic that involved Democrats speaking throughout the night twice last week, and otherwise insisting on taking as much time as possible for debate for each nominee.
“We feel we have done the country a service by exposing these nominees for who they are,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York told reporters Monday.
Mnuchin, who worked for megabank Goldman Sachs, received specific and harsh criticism from Democrats about foreclosures undertaken by the regional bank that he purchased and ran in the wake of the financial crisis, OneWest.
To slow Mnuchin’s confirmation, Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee took the unusual step of boycotting the committee vote on his candidacy. That measure was necessary, they said, because Mnuchin had failed to answer their questions about whether OneWest had engaged in the practice of “robo-signing” foreclosure documents.
Democrats never received the specific materials they were looking for because Republicans suspended the committee’s rules to push Mnuchin through the committee vote without any Democrats having to show up to reach a quorum.
Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, of Utah, on Monday defended Mnuchin on the Senate floor, arguing that his answers about the bank’s foreclosures were adequate. Mnuchin’s defense, he said, “was truthful and defensible, but it didn’t conform to the Democratic talking points drafted for this nominee.”
Hatch also noted that Obama Treasury Secretary Jack Lew won confirmation to be President Obama’s treasury secretary, despite engaging in the kinds of practices that Mnuchin did, such as using offshore accounts and being penalized by financial regulators. “To say that my Democrat friends are trying to make a mountain out of a molehill would be an insult to moles everywhere,” Hatch said. “There is no molehill to be found here.”
Democrats, however, criticized not only Mnuchin’s record in business, but also his policy preferences
Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Finance Committee, argued Monday on the floor that Mnuchin could be responsible for implementing tax cuts for high-income earners.
Wyden contrasted Mnuchin’s statement, made on television shortly after his nomination, that there would be “no absolute tax cut” under Trump with the president’s own plans to repeal Obamacare taxes on the wealthy and cut other taxes for high earners.
“When a nominee for treasury secretary makes a pledge like Mr. Mnuchin, it really ought to mean something. It ought to stand for something,” Wyden said. “Unfortunately, it already looks like the Mnuchin Rule is on the ropes.”
Engaging with Congress on tax reform, trade deals and healthcare benefits will be a key priority for Mnuchin as he gets settled in. More immediately, however, he will have to decide about a course of action on Treasury tax regulations meant to prevent companies from moving overseas.
