{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.merkley.senate.gov/news/in-the-news/democrats-aim-to-launch-comeback-with-cabinet-showdown-", "Democrats aim to launch comeback with Cabinet showdown", "2016-12-22", "2016", "2016-12", "Democrat", "House", "OR", "Jeff Merkley", "M001176", "www.merkley.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "Democrats aim to launch comeback with Cabinet showdown  \r\n\r\n     An opposition strategy for January confirmation hearings is emerging: To expose Trump's campaign platform as a 'scam.' \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThursday, December 22, 2016\r\n\r\n\t\n\r\n\r\n\r\n  \r\n    By:\u00a0\r\n    Burgess Everett \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nSenate Democrats are approaching the January confirmation battle over Donald Trump\u2019s Cabinet as a chance to launch their political comeback and expose the president-elect as a fraud.\r\nLawmakers know they\u2019re unlikely, at best, to stop any of Trump\u2019s Cabinet picks from being installed. But they still see major opportunity in the confirmation hearings. The goal, according to lawmakers and aides: to depict Trump\u2019s chosen inner circle of billionaires and conservative hard-liners as directly at odds with the working-class Americans he vowed to help.\r\n\u201cHis campaign, based on his nominations, was a charade. [H]e sold the American public on a story that is a false story. It is a scam,\u201d said Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), who was recently promoted to chief deputy whip. \u201cHe said: \u2018I\u2019m for working people and for taking on Wall Street, I\u2019m for draining the swamp.\u2019 And his nominees say the exact opposite.\u201d\r\nSenate Democrats want to force Trump\u2019s picks to lay down markers on specific policies that can be used to build a case against the incumbent as his administration unfolds and the next election approaches, insiders said. More immediately, they want to begin to make the case to Trump voters that what they voted for is a far cry from what they\u2019ll be getting with the next president.\r\nDemocrats believe they have a target-rich environment. Trump\u2019s selections to run the Transportation Department and Small Business Administration, Elaine Chao and Linda McMahon, will probably move quickly. But the other selections, they say, have serious vulnerabilities to exploit \u2014 whether it\u2019s Rex Tillerson\u2019s ties to big oil and Russia, Steven Mnuchin\u2019s Wall Street career, Betsy DeVos\u2019 antipathy toward public schools or Tom Price\u2019s past support for overhauling Medicare.\r\n\u201cYou\u2019ve got a woman whose mission in life for the Department of Education is to privatize the public education system. You\u2019ve got this secretary of HHS designee whose mission has been to raise the eligibility age for Medicare,\u201d said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who will help oversee Ben Carson\u2019s confirmation as housing secretary on the Banking Committee. \u201cYou need a scorecard to keep up with the attack on American values.\u201d\r\nRepublicans predict the Democratic plan will flop.\r\n\u201cSenate Democrats spent the last eight years explaining the need for a president to have the team he nominates,\u201d said Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. \u201cSurely it wasn\u2019t simply partisan posturing.\u201d\r\nDemocrats need time and ammunition to execute their case. So they\u2019re laying the groundwork to draw out the confirmation process \u2014 not for the sake of delay, they say, but to train attention on each of the nominees.\r\nThey\u2019re planning to press for lengthy \u2014 in some cases multiday \u2014 committee hearings for most of Trump\u2019s nominees, followed by a floor debate. On Thursday, the top Democrats on 16 committees issued a \"statement of principles\" arguing that nominees should not receive committee votes until they've cleared an FBI background check, completed financial disclosure forms and provided other requested material.\r\n\u201cYou\u2019re talking at least a month-and-a-half, a couple of months to get [through] all the Cabinet nominees,\u201d Merkley said.\r\nRepublicans have other ideas. They want to mow through the confirmation process and move on to repealing Obamacare and reforming the tax code. If Democrats delay, a senior GOP aide said, \u201cwe will make them vote at 3 in the morning.\u201d\r\nAs for the ammunition, Democratic committee staffers and outside groups such as the Center for American Progress are digging into the records of Trump\u2019s Cabinet selections in search of embarrassing skeletons.\r\nAmerican Bridge is coordinating with Senate leaders and rank-and-file Democrats on opposition research, a task that most Senate staffers were not preparing to do before Trump\u2019s surprise win. The group is digging around on Tillerson, Mnuchin, DeVos, attorney general nominee Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and Environmental Protection Agency pick Scott Pruitt.\r\n\u201cTrump clearly hasn't vetted his nominees, so it's up to us to do the work and expose his Cabinet as a group of billionaires looking out for their own interests,\u201d said Kevin McAlister, a spokesman for American Bridge. \u201cOur goal is to help Senate Democrats keep Trump historically unpopular throughout his administration, starting with these nomination fights.\u201d\r\nDemocrats are also demanding new disclosures of all Cabinet nominees\u2019 tax records, to bolster their case that they and the president-elect are out to enrich themselves. Just three committees generally receive nominees' tax returns.\r\nTrump and Republicans are unlikely to acquiesce. But Democrats believe they already have enough to go after Cabinet selections like Mnuchin, whose record purchasing distressed loans, they say, is one of their strongest rebuttals to Trump\u2019s \u201cdrain the swamp\u201d rhetoric.\r\n\u201cMy view is, based on what I\u2019ve learned this far, is that he was profiting off predatory loans,\u201d said Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Finance Committee. \u201cThis is something that we were told wasn\u2019t going to happen in the campaign.\u201d\r\nAnother established attack line is on DeVos, whom Democrats want to pay a years-old election fine of more than $5 million. DeVos has fought back, employing a spokesman who regularly blasts out refutations of any critical reporting about the prospective education secretary.\r\nDemocrats privately concede that Sessions is likely to win confirmation. But they want to make the vote as painful as possible for Republicans in states with large Hispanic populations, such as Dean Heller (Nev.) and Jeff Flake (Ariz.). Sessions has one of the most conservative records in the Senate on immigration.\r\n\u201cThat vote will be brutal,\u201d said a senior Democratic aide.\r\nSimilarly, Democrats want to make Republicans squirm when it comes time to vote on Tillerson, who has a personal relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin from his role atop ExxonMobil.\r\n\u201cIt was more than just a business relationship. There\u2019s a personal relationship there \u2026 we need to drill down on whether he will put U.S. interests ahead of personal friendship,\u201d said Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.\r\nThe Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment for this story. And not all Democrats are on board with the tactics.\r\nIncoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has unleashed a blistering attack on Republicans for pushing changes to Medicare. That\u2019s been augmented by the nomination of Price, who has previously pushed for an overhaul to the entitlement program.\r\nBut Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) doesn't see the connection.\r\n\u201cI\u2019ve heard President-elect Trump say he\u2019s not for privatizing Social Security and he\u2019s not for privatizing Medicare,\u201d Manchin said. \u201cI would think Tom Price has mellowed out.\u201d\r\nThe elimination of the filibuster for Cabinet nominees is forcing Democrats now to adapt their strategy and end game. Before they could have zeroed in on one Cabinet selection to block, and then allowed select Democrats to vote against individual nominees based on their parochial political interests, while still allowing the picks to be confirmed.\r\nLacking that leverage, Democrats will be liberated to launch an all-out rhetorical assault on Trump and congressional Republicans. The result is expected to be a much more partisan and political confirmation process.\r\n\u201cWe\u2019ve never seen the kind of radical nominees that Trump has put up. And frankly, we\u2019ve never seen nominees with this little experience,\u201d said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). \u201cWe need some time to talk to the American public about what the consequences are.\u201d\r\nRepublicans argue that the GOP swallowed almost all of President Barack Obama\u2019s nominees within the first couple weeks and that Democrats\u2019 plans to mount a sustained attack on Trump\u2019s Cabinet belies Senate tradition.\r\nBut given the chamber\u2019s rules, Democrats could drag out the process well into February or possibly beyond.\r\n\u201cEvery one of these nominees has to be scrutinized closely and exactingly,\" said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). \"One by one.\"\r\n\u00a0\r\n\r\n \r\n           \r\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\tPrint\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\tEmail\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t  \n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tTweet", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.merkley.senate.gov/news/in-the-news/democrats-aim-to-launch-comeback-with-cabinet-showdown-"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.817598007619381, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}