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WASHINGTON ― Senate Democrats deployed a dramatic eleventh-hour …
Senate Democrats Boycott Key Votes On 2 Top Trump Nominees
Republicans don’t have the quorum needed to move forward.
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WASHINGTON ― Senate Democrats deployed a dramatic eleventh-hour maneuver to deny committee votes to two of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks Tuesday, arguing that those nominees had lied to them.
Senators on the Finance Committee were set to vote on Rep. Tom Price
(R-Ga.) to lead the Department of Health and Human Services and Steve
Mnuchin to lead the Treasury Department. But on Tuesday morning, they
simply didn’t show up for the votes, denying Republicans the quorum they
needed to move forward toward confirmation. At least one Democrat needs
to be present for the vote to happen.
Explaining the boycott,
Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said the two
nominees “misled the public and held back important information about
their backgrounds.”
“Until questions are
answered, Democrats believe the committee should not move forward with
either nomination. ... This is about getting answers to questions, plain
and simple. Ethics laws are not optional, and nominees do not have a
right to treat disclosure like a shell game,” he added.
With their plans to quickly
confirm Trump’s nominees upended, Senate Republicans were outraged,
suggesting even that they’d consider changing committee rules to
eliminate the need for a minority member to be present.
“This is one of the most
alarming things I’ve seen in my 40 years in the U.S. Senate,” Finance
Committee Chair Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said in the hearing Tuesday. “There
isn’t a fellow on the other side I do not care for. Normally they’re
very honorable and decent people. That’s why it’s so shocking to me that
they’re not here when we’ve given them every opportunity to be here.
... That’s not only ridiculous, it’s offensive.”
“I think they ought to stop
posturing and acting like idiots,” he added. “Stop holding news
conferences and come here and express yourself here and vote one way or
the other.”
Plans to boycott the
hearings were first discussed on Monday evening, senior Democratic aides
told The Huffington Post, with committee members expressing frustration
over the answers, or lack thereof, they’d received from Mnuchin and
Price.
Wyden and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) spoke late into the night about how to organize committee Democrats into action.
Lawmakers felt the two
nominees had misled them at various points in the confirmation process
and were looking for a leverage point to get additional explanations. On
Tuesday morning, the aides said, committee Democrats met in Wyden’s
office and agreed to go forward with the plan shortly before the hearing
was set to begin.
When Price was questioned
about his purchase of discounted stock in an Australian biotechnology
firm in the Senate Finance Committee, he said the offer to purchase
discounted shares was “available to every single individual that was an
investor at the time.” Company documents and a report by The Wall Street Journal
showed that, contrary to Price’s statement, only a limited number of
U.S. investors in the company were invited to buy the stock at the
lowered price. Democrats have asked the Securities and Exchange
Commission and the Office of Congressional Ethics to investigate whether
Price violated insider trading laws and ethics rules.
“I asked Congressman Price
directly if he got an exclusive discount on stock in an Australian
biomedical firm, and he said no,” Wyden said Tuesday. “From the
committee’s investigation to company documents to the company officials’
own words, the evidence tells a different story. It looks more and more
like Congressman Price got special access to a special deal.”
And The Columbus Dispatch
reported recently that Mnuchin, who was previously the chief executive
of OneWest Bank, “flatly denied in testimony before the Senate Finance
Committee that OneWest used ‘robo-signing’ on mortgage documents. But records show the bank utilized the questionable practice in Ohio.”
Brown has said he wants Mnuchin to provide data on how many OneWest foreclosures there were in each state.
“Mnuchin profited off of
kicking people out of their homes and then gave false testimony about
his bank’s abusive practices,” Brown said in a statement Tuesday. “He
cannot be trusted to make decisions about policies as personal to
working Ohioans as their taxes and retirement.”
Senate Democrats have been under increased pressure
from their base in recent days to be more aggressive in standing up to
Trump. So far, every single Democrat has voted for at least one of the
president’s picks. But going forward, there are more calls for them to
oppose every single person Trump tries to get confirmed.
In 2013, Republicans boycotted the committee vote on Gina McCarthy
to be head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Sen. Jeff Sessions
(R-Ala.), Trump’s pick for attorney general, was a member of the
committee and part of that boycott.
Brown said his
effort wasn’t part of some broader political tactic to stop Trump but
was centered on his problems with these particular nominees. He conceded
that Democrats, being in the minority, can’t really hold up the
nominees for long. Even though committee rules require at least one
Democrat to be there to vote on a nominee, there’s no official
punishment for breaking those rules.
“[Hatch] can go
ahead and vote,” Brown said. “But do you want to break the committee
rules and force out two people who lied to the committee about something
as serious as robo-signings and buying and selling health care stocks as a health care congressman?”
Jennifer Bendery contributed reporting.
This post has been updated with more details on the boycott.
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