WASHINGTON — Expect a number of nominees of Donald Trump to have confirmation hearings before Trump is inaugurated on Jan. 20, Republican Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso said.
Despite Senate Democrats reportedly threatening to slow-walk Trump nominees, Senate Republicans plan to use every advantage they have being in the majority to hold hearings to vet the nominees and confirm as many as possible by the time Trump takes office.
“Elections have consequences. Democrats are still in shock that they’ve lost the presidency, and they are in the minority still in the United States Senate, so we are going to do everything we can to make sure that President-elect Trump’s nominees are confirmed after we have hearings,” Barrasso told reporters Tuesday.
“We want to make sure that hearings start, and that’s why we are coming in with the swearing-in day in the Senate Jan. 3, and then we will continue to work. We will not take a recess as often is done between then and the inauguration, but we will be in session. And then the week that is normally the Martin Luther King birthday week we are going to be in session that week, other than Monday, which is a federal holiday,” he said.
He noted that President Barack Obama came into office on his first day and “we confirmed seven of his nominees, so he would have a functional cabinet to begin.”
“We would hope that Democrats would do the same thing with Republican nominees,” Barrasso said, adding that Republicans would look to confirm Trump’s nominees by voice vote like many of Obama nominees were on his first day in office.
Connecticut Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal, however, does not care if his own party and Republicans voice-voted Obama nominees on the president’s first day in office. He told The Daily Caller he would demand a recorded vote.
“They could have done it then, if the Republicans had wanted it, but they never asked for it, so far as I know. I wasn’t around then. I’m telling you what I believe what I should do be doing as a member of this body voting on cabinet members the first time in a new administration,” Blumenthal said. “We are here to vote and have our votes recorded.”
Blumenthal insists he would have called for recorded votes of all of Obama nominees in the first term if he were in the Senate at the time.
