Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Monday upped the ante in the fight over Senate confirmation hearings for Donald Trump’s cabinet picks. Senator Schumer is using Mitch McConnell’s own words against him to try and slow down the confirmation hearing schedule.

[AdSense-A]

Chuck Schumer uses Mitch McConnell’s own words against him in confirmation fight

McConnell is ignoring his own standard for Senate confirmation hearings that he set in 2009, and Chuck Schumer is jumping at the opportunity to point out the hypocrisy.

On Monday, Senator Schumer sent back to Mitch McConnell a 2009 letter that McConnell wrote to then-Majority Leader Harry Reid where McConnell demanded that all of Obama’s nominees to submit ethics agreements, undergo FBI background checks and complete questionnaires before they were scheduled for confirmation hearings.

Schumer said McConnell should enforce the same standards now that his party is in the majority. “I don’t bring this up to play gotcha,” Schumer said. “I’m doing it to show that our requests are eminently reasonable and, in fact, have been shared by leaders of both parties.”

[AdSense-B]

In fact, Schumer shared a copy of the amended letter that he sent to McConnell via Twitter.

 


Chuck Schumer also pointed out why doing a full ethics and vetting review is particularly important this time because so many of Trump’s nominees “from enormous wealth” and have essentially no government experience. “Jamming all these hearings into one or two days, making members run from committee to committee makes no sense,” he said. “These nominees are going to hold incredibly powerful positions for potentially the next four years. To spend an extra day or two on each nominee, even if it takes a few weeks to get through them all in order to carefully consider their nominations, that is well worth it.”

[AdSense-C]