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Democrats Vow to Stall Trump's Cabinet Picks

January 10, 2017

Senate confirmation hearings for Donald Trump's Cabinet picks began this week, starting Tuesday morning with Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) for attorney general.

The hearings are expected to continue throughout the week and into next week. Retired Gen. John Kelly also had his hearing on Tuesday to head the Department of Homeland Security before the bulk of them are set to take place on Wednesday and Thursday.

Senate Democrats, most notably Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), have vowed to slow down the confirmation process for Trump's nominees.

Schumer said earlier this month that Democrats would work to slow down the confirmation process for eight nominees by having at least two days of hearings for each Cabinet pick and no more than two hearings per week.

Senate Democrats had a much different approach to the confirmation process eight years ago when Barack Obama was elected president. Luckily, the Washington Free Beacon is here to remind a few key Democratic lawmakers how much they respect the democratic process and their prior calls for quick confirmations.

"We have always had the tradition of moving these nominees as quickly as we possibly could," Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) said in December 2008.

"This type of obstructionism is enormously anti-democratic," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) previously said of Republicans.

"It is important that the Justice Department have its senior leadership in place without delay," Sen. Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.) cautioned at the time

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D., Mo.), an avid critic of Donald Trump, added during hearings for Obama's Cabinet: "As much as some people in this room don't like it, he was elected president of the United States by the American people."