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Nominations

Floor Speech

Date: Dec. 17, 2020
Location: Washington, DC

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, we are getting, perhaps, close to a new Presidency. So there is a lot of talk about how the Senate might handle new Cabinet people. Democrats are always lecturing Republican Senators about approving future Biden Cabinet nominees, even if we don't agree with them.

Now, that is pretty darn rich. In other words, they are saying something like this: Don't follow our example from the past four years.

Or another way to put that is: Don't treat Biden nominees to the Cabinet like we treated Trump nominees to the Cabinet.

So they seem to want two sets of rules for Republican and Democratic Cabinet nominees, just like they want with judicial nominees.

President Obama had six Cabinet Secretaries approved by the Senate on his Inauguration Day, without even needing a rollcall vote, so that President Obama could hit the ground running.

President Trump had none by voice vote, and only two were approved by rollcall votes before the President took over. Trump Cabinet and sub- Cabinet nominees, even ones who had been easily confirmed in previous Republican administrations, faced obstruction and partisan ``nay'' votes. Many Democrat Senators who aspired to be President voted against virtually every single Trump nominee, no matter how well qualified.

My position has always been that a President should have the ability to choose his own Cabinet people whom he gets along with and whom he gets along with on policy, provided, of course, that they are qualified and will follow the law.

That is the way it should be. It is how I have approached nominees to date. But can Senate Republicans be sure that if we employ that standard, Democrats will play fair with the next Republican President?

I don't want retaliation for its own sake, but the threat of holding Democratic Senators to their own standards has been our only means of deterrence of obstruction. I want to hear from Democrats why we should not now adopt their standards and vote down nominees based on politics.

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