Biden Cabinet Confirmation Live Thread ***hearings, votes, etc.***

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Go off King

https://twitter.com/AndrewSolender/status/1363989112684961798

Tanden needs to be worried about Sinema. Sinema can the deal the death blow to Tanden's nomination. She's been silent so far.

Apparently Murkowski is still undecided.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

During today's session:

https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1364314498052587520

Sounds like this was planned ahead of time.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Both the Homeland Security and Budget Committees have postponed votes on Tanden's nomination without rescheduling.

Are they at least using the allotted time to do something else?  There’s no sense wasting time if we can help it, although the rules may not allow this.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

They’re gonna let Tanden “withdraw to avoid being a distraction” rather than having Biden pull the nomination himself as is customary.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Whatever you think of him, Vilsack did have reputation for knowing every inch of the USDA inside out and being at least as knowledgeable about it as anyone else to hold the post in recent history.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Manchin certainly knows how to pick his battles, you listening Kyrsten?

Err...this is the same Joe Manchin throwing a fit about raising the minimum wage

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

https://twitter.com/SenateCloakroom/status/1365028670151274496?s=20
https://twitter.com/SenateCloakroom/status/1365029970381336578?s=20
They won't be doing anything tomorrow. Must be nice to have so many three-day weekends. 🙄

WTF, why are they wasting a whole day?

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Sasse went after Beccera hard in his questioning the other day. 

I am wondering if these issues will be a problem for Manchin's support.

Seems pretty unlikely

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

https://twitter.com/jeneps/status/1366896297144446980?s=21

Called it

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Some other Biden nominees/appointees whom I haven’t seen mentioned here:

- Richard Glick was appointed Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

- James Kvaal has been nominated for Under Secretary of Education (the third highest ranking post in the Education Department)

- Deanne Criswell has been nominated to head FEMA

- David S. Cohen has been appointed Deputy CIA Director

- Dilawar Syed has been nominated for Deputy Administrator of the Small Business Administration

- Samantha Power has been nominated as Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development

- Jennifer Abruzzo has been nominated for General Counsel to the Federal Labor Relations Authority

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

snip

Can I just say that I really appreciate and enjoy reading your updates.

Thank you. I was originally keeping track of it for my students, but now that I have started I want to follow the whole thing to the end (and by end, I mean when the entire cabinet and the most important deputies have been confirmed).

Any chance we could convince you to keep it going for the next two years? 

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I hope you're happy with this annoying fake moderate, ME voters.

She just literally saved Becerra dude (with Hirono out Dems didn't have the votes on their own). She voted for Haaland as well. She's anything but the partisan warrior that Atlas makes her out to be.

No, she didn’t

Hirono would’ve just given another Democrat her proxy if necessary.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I hope you're happy with this annoying fake moderate, ME voters.

She just literally saved Becerra dude (with Hirono out Dems didn't have the votes on their own). She voted for Haaland as well. She's anything but the partisan warrior that Atlas makes her out to be.

No, she didn’t

Hirono would’ve just given another Democrat her proxy if necessary.

Proxy voting is not a thing in the Senate (at least on the floor).

I’m pretty sure it is (it definitely was in the 1950s, at the very least) and even if it no longer is, Hirono would’ve been there if we needed her vote or they’d have held it on a day she could be there.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I hope you're happy with this annoying fake moderate, ME voters.

She just literally saved Becerra dude (with Hirono out Dems didn't have the votes on their own). She voted for Haaland as well. She's anything but the partisan warrior that Atlas makes her out to be.

No, she didn’t

Hirono would’ve just given another Democrat her proxy if necessary.

Proxy voting is not a thing in the Senate (at least on the floor).

They couldn't have waited?

Sure, but unless Hirono's going to be back quickly, Schumer would have had to wait until after the Easter Recess.
Also it might have required repeating some steps again since the GOP might have objected to a UC request to extend post cloture debate, meaning Schumer would have to file a motion to reconsider and then invoke Cloture again.

I hope you're happy with this annoying fake moderate, ME voters.

She just literally saved Becerra dude (with Hirono out Dems didn't have the votes on their own). She voted for Haaland as well. She's anything but the partisan warrior that Atlas makes her out to be.

No, she didn’t

Hirono would’ve just given another Democrat her proxy if necessary.

Proxy voting is not a thing in the Senate (at least on the floor).

I’m pretty sure it is (it definitely was in the 1950s, at the very least) and even if it no longer is, Hirono would’ve been there if we needed her vote or they’d have held it on a day she could be there.

So you referred to a Senate rule from 70 years ago to make your point? LOL

In the modern day, proxy voting is only a thing in committees as far as the Senate is concerned: https://www.senate.gov/reference/glossary_term/proxy_voting.htm

They would’ve waited to even hold the cloture vote in the first place if they weren’t 100% certain they had the votes  

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Becerra likely could have been confirmed eventually without Collins, but she is on the moderate side of the party given that she's voting for a lot of the more controversial nominees.

Collins is a "moderate" in much the same way that Joe Manchin is a DINO or Bob Casey is pro-life.  The only Republican Senator you could argue is even remotely moderate is Murkowski and even that is a bit of a stretch.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Well I see her and Murkowski as moderates as well as Manchin.

Manchin is a moderate.  Murkowski is arguably one as well, albeit on the more conservative side as far as moderates go.  Collins is simply a conservative partisan hack masquerading as a moderate.  She voted to put a sex predator who attempted to rape a woman on the Supreme Court and supported Donald Trump because that was the Republican line.  She's every bit as big a right-wing partisan hack as Ted Cruz or Mitch McConnell, she's just somewhat constrained at times by the fact that she's from Maine and thus has to maintain the illusion in order to keep getting reelected.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

When will Biden select a budget replacement candidate ?

When will the Senate read on the Wikipedia page that Biden has selected Eric Lander 2 months ago already for Science and announce a hearing ?

If he’s smart, he’ll just make Young acting OBM director and keep annually rotating a series of acting OBM directors to avoid wasting legislative days.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

White House withdraws deputy Interior secretary amid pushback from Murkowski

What about Manchin?

Manchin probably signaled privately that he was gonna vote no or wanted her nomination pulled as a concession for voting to confirm someone more important like Kahl, Gupta, or Dr. Murthy.  My guess would be Kahl since apparently Manchin had a call about his nomination last night.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Pretty interesting development here:

https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1374437476845060104?s=20

If this is more than a performative bluff, she needs to be primaried in 2022 and replaced with someone who isn’t a deranged lunatic.

Also, if she really believes this then she’s arguably outed herself as something of a racist.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

As part of this, Duckworth is blocking Colin Kahl...Who happens to be a strong supporter of the Iran deal and diplomacy with Iran generally.

What a racist piece of sh!t

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

6.8% of the total U.S. population is AAPI. There are 25 members of the Biden Cabinet: 2 of said members - the VP & the USTR (who's a member of the Cabinet as it's currently constituted because, yes, Cabinet-level counts) - are AAPI, meaning 8% of the Biden Cabinet is AAPI. Biden pledged to appoint a Cabinet that "looked like America." What's the issue here?

Also People need to be looking at CVAP and not total pop

With all due respect, that is a pretty terrible idea.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Manchin will vote to confirm Kahl

I maintain that Biden probably pulled Elizabeth Klein’s Deputy Interior Secretary nomination as part of some sort of deal with Manchin to support Kahl (until that happened, Manchin seemed to be leaning no on Kahl and had a call about it with the WH the night before Klein’s nomination was withdrawn).  Klein opposes drilling to an even more than Haaland does (IIRC Haaland has never explicitly called for banning oil/natural gas drilling and coal mining in the U.S.), but it was more important to get Kahl confirmed imo.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

OK now that the Cabinet is all confirmed can this thread be un-stickied?

No

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1381699897645219843

This is an old one

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Any idea why Weil failed?

Also I believe that is the first no vote from Kelly on anyone.

That no vote from Kelly tells me he's getting nervous about his reelection prospects.

Has he announced what his vote will be on KBJ yet?

It’s obviously gonna be yes on KBJ