WASHINGTON — Senate Minority Leader Senator Schumer claimed Tuesday his caucus was not interested in getting revenge on Republicans for not holding a confirmation hearing for Obama Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.
But Schumer did say Democrats will “fight tooth and nail” against anyone they considered not “mainstream.”
When asked by a reporter what he considered to be a mainstream nominee for the high court, Schumer responded, “Mainstream is something—it means that you follow existing law–that you don’t use the court to change things around to your personal ideological likes and predilections.”
Schumer added, “There’s no litmus test, but that’s what it means, and you have to go through vetting a candidate seriously and go through hearings to see if that candidate is mainstream.”
Republicans in the upper chamber already find themselves in multiple nomination battles with Senate Democrats over President Donald Trump’s cabinet picks. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell re-iterated the Democrats’ need to “re-litigate” the 2016 presidential election, and Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn noted how many nominees former President Barack Obama already had at this point in his presidency.
“At this point (5 days in) there were 14 cabinet members confirmed. So far there are three under President Trump. There is simply no excuse for this. Twelve of the nominees have all of their paperwork completed and as the majority leader indicated…this is simply re-litigating the election,” Cornyn said at the Republican leaders presser Tuesday.
Schumer responded to Republicans saying, “There are a whole bunch of nominees that have real problems—real problems. Just today, nominee [South Carolina Republican Rep. Mick] Mulvaney said he’d raise the age of Social Security.”
He went on, “If we’d rushed through the hearings the way our Republican colleagues had wanted to maybe we wouldn’t have found that out. It is the obligation of both Republicans and Democrats to vet these nominees thoroughly.”