Democrats to Give Trump Cabinet Picks the Garland Treatment

By Burgess Everett and Elana Schor, Politico

06 December 16

 

Delay tactics could sap momentum from the president's first 100 days. 'What goes around comes around,' one lawmaker says.

enate Democrats are preparing to put Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks through a grinding confirmation process, weighing delay tactics that could eat up weeks of the Senate calendar and hamper his first 100 days in office.

Multiple Democratic senators told POLITICO in interviews last week that after watching Republicans sit on Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court for nearly a year, they’re in no mood to fast-track Trump’s selections.

But it’s not just about exacting revenge.

Democrats argue that some of the president-elect’s more controversial Cabinet picks — such as Jeff Sessions for attorney general and Steven Mnuchin for treasury secretary — demand a thorough public airing.

“They’ve been rewarded for stealing a Supreme Court justice. We’re going to help them confirm their nominees, many of whom are disqualified?” fumed Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). “It’s not obstruction, it’s not partisan, it’s just a duty to find out what they’d do in these jobs.”

Senate Democrats can’t block Trump’s appointments, which in all but one case need only 51 votes for confirmation. But they can turn the confirmation process into a slog.

Any individual senator can force Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to hold procedural votes on nominees. Senior Democrats said a series of such votes are likely for many of Trump’s picks.

Democrats could conceivably force up to 30 hours of debate for each Cabinet nominee, which would be highly disruptive for a GOP Senate that usually works limited hours but has big ambitions for next year. The minority could also stymie lower-level nominees and potentially keep the Senate focused on executive confirmations for weeks as Trump assumes the presidency and congressional Republicans try to capitalize on their political momentum.

"I don’t want to needlessly prevent President Trump from being successful,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.). “But accelerating the confirmation of unacceptable candidates who have views that are outside the mainstream is not constructive.”

Eight years ago, when the roles were reversed, with Barack Obama taking office and an all-Democratic Congress, Republicans were mostly deferential to the incoming president. On Obama's first day in office, the Senate confirmed seven of Obama's Cabinet nominees. By the end of that week, it had cleared more than a dozen senior-level positions, all without dissent except for Hillary Clinton’s nomination to be secretary of state, for which the GOP demanded a roll call.

Trump almost certainly won’t be receiving similar treatment.

“There should be recorded votes, in my view, on every one of the president’s Cabinet nominees,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). “Having all of these hearings before the inaugural in a thorough and fair fashion seems very difficult to do.”

Republicans are already chafing at the prospect of Democrats drawing out the confirmation process.

“It is always the intention, at the start of a new administration, to have a smooth transition. That's something President Obama recently called for and that Democrats always say they want,” said Don Stewart, a spokesman for McConnell. “When the shoe was on the other foot, Republicans worked with Democrats to confirm the president's Cabinet in a very, very timely manner.”

Some appointees, like Elaine Chao’s nomination to lead the Transportation Department, are unlikely to be delayed. But Democrats will force retired Marine Gen. James Mattis to get 60 votes for a legislative waiver to become secretary of defense, and they're singling out at least four other nominations for strict scrutiny.

Trump has made selections for fewer than half of his Cabinet and senior-level positions, though he's vowing to name the rest within a week.

Democrats are likely to require roll call votes and possibly delay the nominations of Betsy DeVos to be secretary of education and Tom Price to to be Health and Human Services secretary, in addition to Mattis, Mnuchin and Sessions.

The attorney general nominee looks like he's in for an especially rough ride. Brown said Sessions "was dissed by the Senate once for his racism,” a reference to his rejection by the chamber 30 years ago to become a federal judge.

Historically, the Senate began hearings before Inauguration Day for every attorney general nominee from a newly elected president since Dwight Eisenhower, with the exception of a nominee carried over by George H.W. Bush from the Reagan administration who was approved without a hearing. Incoming Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said she highly doubts Sessions will be confirmed on Inauguration Day.

She, like other Democrats interviewed for this story, said that Republicans’ treatment of Garland is impossible to forget.

“Past is present, and what goes around comes around. Now, those are pretty hackneyed sayings, but those are really true around here,” Feinstein said in an interview.

Not all Democrats are on board with a strategy of delay.

Informed that Democrats might hold up Sessions and other nominations past Jan. 20, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia responded: “That’s just bullshit.”

“My God, I think we should have an attorney general in place on Jan. 20. I sure do believe that," added Manchin, one of five Democratic senators up for reelection in 2018 in states that overwhelmingly supported Trump.

But because of Senate rules, there's little Manchin or other skeptical Democrats can do to stop individual lawmakers intent on drawing out the confirmation proceedings.

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), a former teacher who does not sit on the committee that will vet DeVos for education secretary, said he would wait to make a decision on her until “I bring her into my office" to discuss rural schooling issues.

“I’ve heard no conversations about the kind of obstruction that Mitch McConnell specialized in,” said another endangered Democrat, Claire McCaskill of Missouri. “But there may be some where there are real questions about their qualifications and some of the things in their backgrounds.”

Democrats are hoping to avoid the obstructionist label by picking their fights carefully.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said Trump should be able to assemble his team and called Friday for swift installation of a secretary of state. But that doesn't mean Democrats will rubber stamp all of the president-elect's picks, he said.

“I’m not going to vote for radical nominees, and I’m not going to vote for totally unprepared nominees,” Murphy said in an interview. “But if a nominee is more to the mainstream of the Republican Party and has experience in the field they’re undertaking to oversee, there will be Democratic votes.”

That said, the days of mandated bipartisanship for critical nominations are over. Democrats ensured that when they changed Senate rules in 2013 to kill the 60-vote requirement for all nominations except the Supreme Court. Democrats then moved to approve dozens of lifetime judges, though Republicans required procedural votes to stall the nominations as long as they could.

Once Republicans took the Senate, McConnell responded in kind by tying Attorney General Loretta Lynch's nomination to an unrelated bill and then blocking Garland. The GOP counterattack will continue next year with Republicans able to approve Trump's picks on party-line votes and Democrats — thanks to their own decision to change the rules — able to do little more than run the clock.

The tit-for-tat between the parties looks like it's here to stay.

“I’m not into retribution. I really think public service should be more than that,” said Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat. “But they’ve set a pretty harsh standard.”