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Senate Finance Committee votes to advance nomination of Tom Price, MD
The Senate Finance Committee voted to advance the nominations of Rep. Tom Price, MD, (R-Ga.) as secretary of HHS and of Steven Mnuchin as secretary of the treasury to the full Senate without the presence of Senate Democrats.
“I do not think [the Democrats] can complain,” Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said. “My gosh, we have used the rules the way they ought to be used and they used the rules the way they thought they could use them, and they just did not do what was right yesterday.”
Senate Democrats boycotted the approval hearings of Price and Mnuchin earlier this week. According to Hatch, the Senate Office of the Parliamentarian noted that voting to advance the nominations without Senate Democrats present “is a proper procedure.” He noted all members of the Senate Finance Committee were notified of the hearing beforehand.
“All Democrats were notified. Everybody on the committee was notified,” Hatch said. “You notice we had every Republican here. Every Republican was sitting in their seats this morning. Not one Democrat.”
He continued, “All we have to do is start acting like this is a committee that should act well. It always has in the past. We never had anything like this happen in the past, and we will get together and we will make things work in the future.” – by Casey Tingle
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