Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., complained Monday that Republicans are “jamming” too many hearings for President-elect Trump’s Cabinet picks into the same days, forcing senators to run from one hearing to another.
“Jamming all these hearings in one or two days, making members of the committees run from one to another, makes no sense,” Schumer said.
Schumer also reiterated Democrats’ complaints that Republicans have scheduled hearings for many Cabinet nominees before the nonpartisan Office of Government Ethics has had the chance to review their background and financial holdings to uncover any potential conflicts of interest.
Senate Republicans want to have as many of Trump’s choices for confirmation ready for a Senate vote on Inauguration Day. Five confirmation hearings are scheduled for Wednesday with several other overlapping hearings scheduled over the next two weeks.
“These nominees … need to be thoroughly vetted, not just before the U.S. Senate but before the American people,” Schumer said.
Walter Shaub, the OGE director, said in a letter sent to Congress last week that the quick early succession of hearings for Trump’s Cabinet picks before it has had the chance to vet them is of “great concern.”
“This schedule has created undue pressure on OGE’s staff and agency ethics officials to rush through these important reviews,” he wrote. “More significantly, it has left some of the nominees with potentially unknown or unresolved ethics issues shortly before their scheduled hearings.”
Republicans counter that seven of President Obama’s Cabinet members were confirmed on Inauguration Day, and five more were confirmed by voice vote by the end of his first week in office, including Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.
Many of Trump’s choices are billionaires are their financial holdings are so extensive that the OGE’s painstaking reviews are taking much longer than they did for most of Obama’s nominees.
Democrats have said they will use Senate parliamentary procedure to drag out confirmation votes on eight of Trump’s Cabinet nominees until March, but they likely cannot successfully block their confirmations.
Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., ensured all of Trump’s Cabinet will likely get confirmed, unless Republicans defect, by changing Senate rules in 2013 to require a simple majority vote of 51 votes for all executive nominations, except those to the Supreme Court.
