Cabinet Nominations
Floor Speech
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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, today, the Senate began holding hearings for the President-elect's nominees to serve in his Cabinet.
This morning, the Senate Armed Services Committee heard testimony from Pete Hegseth to serve as Secretary of Defense. Few nominees will face the kind of troubling questions that Mr. Hegseth faced going into today's hearing. He is, by outward appearance, woefully unfit for a job like Secretary of Defense. Unfortunately for Mr. Hegseth, his testimony thus far has failed to address the disturbing questions that plague his nomination. It appears Mr. Hegseth's strategy is to follow the five d's of dodgeball: dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge.
Mr. Hegseth failed to explain, for one, why someone with his lack of qualifications should be entrusted to lead our Armed Forces. Why should America entrust our military to a television personality who has never led any large organization? It is a huge organization, DOD. He hasn't come close to having any of that kind of administrative experience. We didn't hear any good answer to that question.
Mr. Hegseth also failed to answer for his deeply flawed history of financial and organizational mismanagement. Why should he be the one entrusted to manage the Pentagon's budget? Again, no good answer.
When asked about his comments as recently as 2 months ago, when he claimed that ``we should not have women in combat roles,'' he had no good answers.
Finally, Mr. Hegseth failed to assure us he has the temperament for the job. His history of excessive drinking is troubling for someone seeking to lead our military, and his reflexive defiance against the allegations regarding sexual assault undermines his credibility.
If Mr. Hegseth had nothing to hide about his past, then it shouldn't be a problem for the chairman of the Armed Services Committee to allow all committee members to review all FBI background documents, but today, Chairman Wicker rejected this reasonable request by Ranking Member Reed to let committee members review Mr. Hegseth's past. Again, if there is nothing to hide about Mr. Hegseth, why is the chairman hell-bent on keeping all relevant information out of the hands of his colleagues? To dismiss the allegations against Mr. Hegseth but then reject full transparency is odd at best, dangerous at worst. It reeks of something hiding in the dark.
Being Secretary of Defense demands discipline, character, and restraint. Mr. Hegseth's history shows he is deficient in all these qualities, and so far, his hearing has not changed that.
Mr. President, now on the noms tomorrow, Mr. Hegseth is not the only nominee testifying this week who must answer for a disturbing record. The number of people with disturbing records who have been nominated-- some of them are good nominees, but the number with disturbing records and histories--I don't think I can remember a time in history when we have had that many.
Tomorrow, we will hear from a large collection of nominees, but let's focus on two: Russell Vought to serve as Director of OMB and Chris Wright to serve as Secretary of Energy.
Let me begin with Russell Vought, a key figure in the first Trump administration and one of the chief architects--one of the chief architects--of Project 2025. This man is not just a bystander who supported it; he helped put it together.
No administration on Earth can claim to be pro-worker and then nominate someone like Russell Vought to oversee the Federal Government's budget. Again, you can't be pro-worker and be for Russell Vought. He has spent years--years--pushing for trillions in cuts to America's social safety net--something that would cause immediate and severe harm to tens of millions of American citizens.
We all know Mr. Vought's history very well. We know his awful and radical record from the first Trump administration. Even after leaving government, Mr. Vought was the go-to authority for the most radical elements of the House GOP, advising them on budgets that punished America's families, seniors, kids, law enforcement, and others with draconian--draconian--budget cuts. His budget cuts weren't just snipping at the edges; they cut to the deep.
Tomorrow, when Vought testifies before the committee, Americans will be reintroduced to his outlandishly extreme agenda. If Project 2025 caused your stomach to turn during the election, Mr. Vought would be a nightmare scenario. If you are among America's working class or from low-income families or from middle-class families working hard to make ends meet, Mr. Vought would be disastrous. If you rely on programs like Medicare or nutrition assistance, Mr. Vought would put those services in danger. On the other hand, if you are among the wealthiest of Americans in this country, Mr. Vought is a wave of good news. He is a staunch advocate of tax cuts for the ultrarich and deregulation for America's mega corporations, even if that means adding trillions to the deficit.
As we will all see tomorrow for ourselves, confirming Mr. Vought would be a disaster for America's working- and middle-class families.
Finally, I would like to say something about President Trump's nominee to serve as Secretary of Energy, Mr. Chris Wright. There is a lot--a heck of a lot--in Mr. Wright's background that should trouble Americans who care about affordable energy and creating good-paying, clean jobs.
Mr. Wright is one of America's wealthiest fossil fuel executives and has a history of sounding like a climate change skeptic. He once said, ``There is no climate crisis'' and ``We have seen no increase in the frequency . . . of hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, and floods.'' What on Earth is this man talking about? Is he such an ideologue that he doesn't see the truth of the world around him?
Mr. Wright, look over at California right now and say that we haven't had increases in these kinds of problems.
Tomorrow, Mr. Wright must answer for his background and his comments. It is like putting a fox in the henhouse. If you believe in clean energy, you couldn't have a worse nominee.
If confirmed, will Mr. Wright fight to lower costs for American consumers or will he fight to help the bottom line of polluters and oil companies? Will Mr. Wright push policies that build on the progress we made in the Inflation Reduction Act that has created hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of good-paying, clean jobs or will he kill those jobs because he is such an ideological extremist? If confirmed, will Mr. Wright advance our country into a prosperous, affordable clean energy future or will he take us backward and do the bidding of Big Oil? He must answer these questions and more tomorrow.
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