{"id":30228,"date":"2017-02-13T12:52:04","date_gmt":"2017-02-13T17:52:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=30228"},"modified":"2017-02-13T12:52:04","modified_gmt":"2017-02-13T17:52:04","slug":"is-this-really-necessary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=30228","title":{"rendered":"Is This Really Necessary?"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Saturday, The Washington Free Beacon<\/a> posted an article about the confirmation hearings for President<\/a> Trump’s cabinet.<\/p>\n

The article reports:<\/p>\n

Trump has now been president for a full three weeks, and the number of approved members in\u00a0his cabinet stands at seven\u2014a number that was boosted by three contested confirmations last week that were opposed<\/a> by almost\u00a0the entire Democratic caucus.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Senate Democrats<\/a>, vowing to use “everything<\/a>” they can to stop Trump<\/a>‘s nominees, have used procedural tricks like\u00a0boycotting committee meetings to slow the confirmation process to a historically slow pace.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Recent administrations have had many\u00a0more nominees approved at the three-week mark. Barack Obama<\/a> had 12 out of 15<\/a>\u00a0nominees approved, George W. Bush<\/a> had his entire cabinet<\/a> approved, and Bill Clinton had all but one<\/a> approved in less than a day.<\/strong><\/p>\n

For most of history, approving cabinet nominees has been a non-issue. Presidents John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and Jimmy Carter<\/a> had their entire cabinet approved in the first days of their presidency\u2014a brisk pace that has been the norm\u00a0for most of U.S. history.<\/strong><\/p>\n

As noted by historian Robert David Johnson, the only confirmation process at all comparable to the current situation was that of\u00a0President George H.W. Bush<\/a>, and even he had 10 of his 14<\/a> nominees confirmed by the three-week mark.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The article reminds us that in the case of President H.W. Bush, the Democrats controlled the Senate and had the power to stop his cabinet choices. The Republicans currently control the Senate, and even then the Democrats are successful at slow-walking President Trump’s cabinet choices. Odds are that all cabinet members will eventually be confirmed. It doesn’t make sense to obstruct, and obstruction may have a political price.<\/p>\n

The article further reports:<\/p>\n

The continuing obstruction of\u00a0even uncontroversial cabinet choices is being driven by\u00a0demands from the liberal base of the Democratic Party, which is demanding that Democratic lawmakers not cooperate with Trump on anything.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Democrats, pushed by their base, are under pressure to not cooperate with the new president\u2014on anything,” wrote<\/a> the Wall Street Journal<\/a><\/em> following reports that Democrats boycotted committee hearings for multiple nominees.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Gone are the concerns about appearing overly obstructionist,” Politico<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>reported<\/a>. “Officeholders are now chasing a base that will not tolerate any sign of accommodation.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

The White House has complained that Democrats are “working overtime” to stop the administration from putting qualified nominees in place at agencies.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Partnership for Public Progress, a nonpartisan group that promotes public service, has said\u00a0the slow pace of confirmations is\u00a0damaging the country.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“They are running the most important organization on the planet, and they don’t have their team on the field,” said<\/a> the organizations CEO. “They don’t have their critical people in place and that’s vital to being able to do their jobs appropriately.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is ridiculous. I am waiting for the Democrats who are slowing the confirmation process to start complaining that the Trump Administration isn’t doing anything. Meanwhile, the Democrats are planning on obstructing anything that is attempted. This is not what the American people signed up for. We want a government that gets things done. We want a government that will do what is needed to restart the economy. We want a government that will get out of health insurance and let the free market work. Simply stated, we want a government that will let us live our lives. This obstructionism is not appreciated by anyone except the extreme left, and candidates running for re-election need votes from all groups of voters. The current actions of the Senate Democrats may please the base, but we will see in 2018 if they actually helped the party or hurt the party.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Saturday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about the confirmation hearings for President Trump’s cabinet. The article reports: Trump has now been president for a full three weeks, and the number of approved members in\u00a0his cabinet stands at … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[97,10613,3357,251,3426,4490,10612],"class_list":["post-30228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-barack-obama","tag-confirmation-hearings","tag-donald-trump","tag-george-w-bush","tag-jimmy-carter","tag-president-of-the-united-states","tag-presidents-cabinet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30228"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30229,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30228\/revisions\/30229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}