By Matt Vespa | Townhall http://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa
Well, we knew fights on Capitol Hill were going to come and for Democrats —they’re first salvo will be against eight of President-elect Trump’s cabinet nominees. Ed O’Keefe at The Washington Post reported that Senate Democrats are planning to target eight nominations, extending their confirmation votes into March. One reason that Democrats are picking these fights is over taxes. Incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said he wants all of the president-elect’s nominees to turn over their financial information. Yet, O’Keefe added that Senate Democrats have also opened themselves up to attacks of hypocrisy concerning their rather deferential treatment towards Barack Obama’s nominees at the outset of his presidency:
Democratic senators plan to aggressively target eight of Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees in the coming weeks and are pushing to stretch their confirmation votes into March — an unprecedented break with Senate tradition.
Such delays would upend Republican hopes of quickly holding hearings and confirming most of Trump’s top picks on Inauguration Day. But Democrats, hamstrung by their minority status, are determined to slow-walk Trump’s picks unless they start disclosing reams of personal financial data they’ve withheld so far, according to senior aides.
Incoming Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has told Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that Democrats will home in especially on Rex Tillerson, Trump’s choice for secretary of state; Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), his pick for attorney general; Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.), tapped to lead the Office of Management and Budget; and Betsy DeVos, selected to serve as education secretary.
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Senate confirmation hearings are scheduled to begin next week, when the Judiciary Committee is set to hold two days of hearings with Sessions, and the Foreign Relations Committee is scheduled to hold a one-day, two-part hearing with Tillerson.
But Schumer has told McConnell that he wants at least two days of hearings for each of these eight nominees, including at least one panel made up of witnesses that can speak to the pick’s past record, aides said. At each hearing, members of the committee would get at least 10 minutes to ask questions, with no limits on multiple rounds of questioning, if requested.
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It’s curious that they’d [Democrats] object to treating the incoming president’s nominees with the same courtesy and seriousness with which the Senate acted on President Obama’s nominees,” Antonia Ferrier, a McConnell spokeswoman, said in an email.
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