U.S. Senate was able to move the nomination of two key cabinet members in Presiden Trump administration to full Senate confirmation. Senate Finance Committee approved Steven Mnuchin to be nominee for Secretary of Treasury and Tom Price for Health and Human Services Secretary in an emergency vote.
Republican Senators in the Finance Committee suspended the committee rules to approve the nomination of Mnuchin and Price, according to Reuters. The Republicans took the emergency procedure to the political standoff launched by Democrats. Following the 14-0 votes for both nominees, the nominations process will go to final process in the full Senate vote.
Democrats have been critical over the two candidates due to their past business activities. They accused Mnuchin had lied about his position in the bank where he worked before. As for Price, the Dems questioned him about his personal purchase activities in the stock market.
Prior to the emergency procedure taken by the GOP, Democrats stalled the scheduled vote on Tuesday, according to USA Today. They still insisted that both nominees did not tell the truth about their business activities and decided to boycott the nomination process.
Following the boycott, Chairman of the Finance Committee Sen. Orrin Hatch (R) from Utah called the protest from Democrats as pathetic. He decided to take emergency action to prevent vacancies of the important position in the presidential cabinet.
"We took some unprecedented actions today,” Senator Hatch explained his decision to launch emergency vote action. “Due to the unprecedented obstruction on the part of our colleagues.”
Following the approval in the finance panel, the nomination process of Price and Mnuchin moves forward to the Senate floor. The GOP-controlled Senate is expected to approve the full Senate confirmation vote for both position.
Watch the report regarding approval of Price and Mnuchin as nominees for two important position in President Trump cabinet by the Republicans Senate below:
