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Mnuchin and Sessions Nomination Votes Delayed
President Donald Trump’s choice of former bank executive Steven Mnuchin to become the next Secretary of the Treasury was put on hold as the Democratic members of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee boycotted today’s scheduled vote on his nomination.
According to a Washington Post report, none of the committee’s Democratic members turned up for today’s meeting. As a result, the nomination vote will need to be scheduled for another day. The committee was also scheduled to vote on the nomination of Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) to become the next Secretary of Health and Human Services, and the absence of Democratic senators also forced that process to be rescheduled.
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), the committee chairman, considered the boycott to be the result of partisan rancor. “Some of this is just because they don’t like the president,” Hatch said, later adding that Democrats “ought to stop posturing and acting like idiots.”
Separately, CNN has reported that the Senate Judiciary Committee delayed voting on the nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AR) to become the next Attorney General. But in this case, the full committee met and the Democrats participating in the meeting used a procedural vote to postpone the vote until tomorrow.
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