Senate Majority Leader John Thune argued that Senate Republicans are actually “ahead of schedule” in the confirmation process of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet, citing how long it took to confirm Trump’s first Cabinet in 2017.
Following Trump’s inauguration on Monday, the Senate has already confirmed four of Trump’s Cabinet nominees, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. While appearing on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo, Thune underscored how “critically important” it was to confirm Trump’s national security team. While several nominees remain to be confirmed, the Senate majority leader noted that he and his fellow Republicans are “queueing up” their confirmations.
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Thune was pressed on why the nominees were not confirmed sooner, and that it “certainly feels” as if Senate Republicans are allowing their Democratic peers to control the confirmation process. The Senate majority leader pushed back against the assessment, arguing Republicans are actually ‘ahead of schedule.”
“We’re going back to what is the Obama standard. Obama got 12 of his Cabinet nominees through in 15 days; it took Trump 43 days to get his first 12 through back in 2017,” Thune detailed. “So we are pushing hard, and obviously there are constraints that are imposed by the rules of the Senate. The minority in the Senate has ways it can slow things down and drag it out. But we’re actually, at the current point, ahead of the Obama standard.”
Thune assured that Senate Republicans will continue to move forward “aggressively” in getting Trump’s nominees confirmed, which will include “forcing people to stay and to take votes on weekends,” referencing how Noem’s confirmation vote was held on Saturday.
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The Senate majority leader also detailed aid that Congress is expected to provide to California as the state deals with the aftermath of the wildfires. Thune stated that Congress still needs to address funding the government before the March 14 deadline and assure California that it has what it needs while being responsible with the nation’s taxpayer dollars.
Trump visited Los Angeles over the weekend, during which he argued that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is “incompetently run” and even suggested doing away with the agency altogether. He suggested that local governments and states having their own version of FEMA would be more effective.