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Another Tough Night in the Senate, Confirmations Roll On

During the second long night of debate (Democrats having debated the DeVos vote all night long), the Senate, which is normally very collegial and staid, voted to silence Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) on Tuesday evening during her her speech on Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL)’s nomination for Attorney General. Senator Warren was reading a letter from Mrs. Corretta Scott King, late wife of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who wrote in the 1980s in opposition to then Senator Session’s nomination to a federal judgeship. 

The Senate voted 49-43 that Warren violated chamber rules against impugning a fellow Senator after during her speech in opposition to the Sessions nomination.

Sessions is expected to be confirmed as the next attorney general at some point today but the vote could come as late as this evening if Democrats use all of the debate time.

Senate Democrats are expected to continue their tactics of using all the debate time, which results in grueling all night debates, with the remaining Cabinet appointees.

DeVos Approved by HELP

The Senate HELP Committee just voted to advance the nominee for Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos. The committee vote was 12-11, which is along party lines.

Two Republicans, Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), said that they voted to advance DeVos’ nomination out of committee but still had concerns about her nomination and remained undecided on how they would vote on the Senate floor.

DeVos’ nomination has yet to be schedule for consideration by the full Senate.

 

Mattis Confirmed as SECDEF

Just hours after President Trump was sworn into office, the Senate on Friday confirmed two of his national security cabinet nominees.

The Senate confirmed retired Gen. James Mattis to run the Pentagon as Defense Secretary.

A four-star general who retired in 2013, Mattis required a waiver to take the top Pentagon job since he hasn’t been out of uniform for at least seven years.

Congress approved legislation exempting him from the requirement last week, and Trump signed it into law as one of his first acts as president.

Trump Transition Previews Budget

Staffers for the Trump transition team have been meeting with career staff at the White House ahead of Friday’s presidential inauguration to outline their plans for shrinking the federal bureaucracy. The proposal takes directly from the Heritage Foundation’s FY 2017 budget blueprint and the Republican Study Committee’s (RSC) FY 2017 Budget Proposal.

While the annual President’s Budget Request is important to set the Administration’s policies and agenda. Congress is ultimately responsible for approving a federal budget and appropriating funds.

The Trump budget, which will not likely be officially unveiled until mid-April, would reduce federal spending by $10.5 trillion over 10 years. The preliminary proposals from the White House budget office will be shared with federal departments and agencies soon after Trump takes the oath of office Friday. Also, Trump’s Cabinet picks have yet to be apprised of the reforms, which would reduce resources within their agencies.

The Commerce and Energy departments would see major reductions in funding, with programs under their jurisdiction either being eliminated or transferred to other agencies. The departments of Transportation, Justice and State would see significant cuts and program eliminations.

The Heritage FY 2017 blueprint, which is reportedly being used as a basis for Trump’s proposed cuts, calls for eliminating several “corporate welfare” programs including:

  • the Minority Business Development Agency,
  • the Economic Development Administration,
  • the International Trade Administration, and
  • the Manufacturing Extension Partnership.

The total savings from cutting these four programs would amount to nearly $900 million in 2017.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be privatized, while the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities would be eliminated entirely.

At the Department of Justice, the blueprint calls for reducing funding for its Civil Rights and its Environment and Natural Resources divisions and eliminating:

  • the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services,
  • Violence Against Women Grants and the Legal Services Corporation.

At the Department of Energy, it would roll back funding for nuclear physics and advanced scientific computing research to 2008 levels, and would eliminate

  • the Office of Electricity,
  • the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and
  • the Office of Fossil Energy, which focuses on technologies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

At the State Department’s , funding for the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the Paris Climate Change Agreement and the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are candidates for elimination.

Many of the specific cuts were included in the 2017 budget adopted by the conservative RSC, a caucus that represents a majority of House Republicans. It is notable, that the RSC budget plan would reduce federal spending by $8.6 trillion over the next decade.

 

Trump vowed during the campaign not to cut Medicare and Social Security, a pledge that Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, told lawmakers in testimony Wednesday has not changed.

That said, it could be very difficult to reduce U.S. debt without tackling the entitlement programs. Conservative House budgets have repeatedly included reforms to Medicare and Social Security, arguing they are necessary to save the programs.

 

This proposal is expected to be met with strong opposition by Democrats.
The Office of Federal Relations will continue to update on this issue.

Inauguration, Confirmation Hearings, Oh My!

The House and Senate are back from the long weekend recognizing the late Civil Rights leader, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and already Congress is at work — though arguably the politics didn’t stop this weekend.

The Senate is gearing up for a second round of fights over President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees as Republicans race to clear his picks ahead of Friday’s Inauguration of the 45th President.

Eight nominees are heading to Capitol Hill this week to face what is expected to be an hours-long grilling from lawmakers. Democrats face an uphill battle to block any of Trump’s picks, which require only 50 votes to clear the Senate.  While Democrats have not publicly said they would block nominees from getting confirmed quickly, they can use procedural levers to drag out a nomination for days and have stressed that a nominee’s paperwork must be complete — lawmakers need enough time to review it and ask follow-up questions.

Highlights include:

On Tuesday, Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT) and Betsy DeVos, Trump’s picks for Interior and Education, respectively, will both get hearings.

On Wednesday, hearings for Wilbur Ross, Trump’s Commerce secretary; Tom Price, his Health and Human Services pick; Scott Pruitt, who has been tapped to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); and Nikki Haley, named to be U.N. ambassador.

On Thursday, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, tapped to lead the Department of Energy, and Steve Mnuchin, his pick for Treasury, will get hearings.

Trump’s Inauguration is three days away. The Washington Post has a good article on what to expect as well as a (growing) list of Members that won’t attend.