Leader Schumer Floor Remarks Expressing Serious Concern For President-Elect Trump’s Extreme And Unqualified Nominees Amidst Their Confirmation Hearings

Washington, D.C. - Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor to express serious concern for President-elect Trump's nominees, including Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense, Russell Vought for Director of the Office of Management and Budget and Chris Wright for Secretary of Energy. Below are Senator Schumer's remarks, which can also be viewed here:

The takeaway from yesterday's hearing on Pete Hegseth is very clear: Pete Hegseth is woefully unfit for the job of Secretary of Defense.

For Mr. Hegseth, yesterday's hearing was an exercise in obfuscation.

When confronted about the serious accusations against his character, Mr. Hegseth repeatedly dismissed them as "smear tactics," but refused to respond to how these character issues impact his qualifications for the job.

When asked if being guilty of sexual assault is disqualifying for the job of Secretary of Defense, Mr. Hegseth refused to answer. Imagine if any other American interviewing for any other job refused to answer that question.

Clearly more information is needed about Mr. Hegseth's background. But when Democrats asked to make Mr. Hegseth's full FBI background documents available to all members of the committee, the Republican Chair said no. Why? Why is the Republican Chair insistent on keeping relevant information about Mr. Hegseth locked away from committee members?

Perhaps the reason for Republican stonewalling is that the more evidence that's revealed about Mr. Hegseth, the more obvious it will become that he is woefully unfit for the job.

For Mr. Hegseth, when there are serious allegations, to not answer them directly and instead just call them smear tactics - especially in such an important job like Secretary of Defense, where people's lives are on the line - it is just totally unacceptable, totally inadequate. It's basically an important nominee, or a nominee for a very important position, just ducking the most important questions he faced.

Now, let me say a few things about why these hearings are so important for our country and to our side.

By all indication, our Republican colleagues seem perfectly comfortable with advancing Mr. Hegseth through the Senate despite his lack of qualifications.

Many of our colleagues have private doubts about the nominees, but publicly they are still willing to embrace them. Donald Trump's hold on Senate Republicans has become very powerful.

Nevertheless, we Democrats will continue to push and pressure and scrutinize each nominee in committee because it's so important to get them on record.

Americans need to see that many of Donald Trump's nominees are simply unfit for the jobs they've been chosen for.

Americans need to hear these nominees answer for Donald Trump's harmful policies.

And if some of these nominees are severely unqualified, these hearings are essential for exposing that. Even if they get confirmed in the end, the information must come out. Even if they get confirmed, it is so important to have all these questions asked and see what the answers, or lack of answers, are.

If the time comes months from now that some of Donald Trump's Cabinet members fail on the job, these hearings will have served as an important warning for the American people to see.

That's why Democrats are committed to ensuring each nominee is vetted thoroughly and scrutinized during the testimony.

And one other point, by the way, on why we think the hearings are important: the hearings are also an opportunity to show whose side each party is on.

Are these nominees in favor of tax cuts for very wealthy people? Are they in favor of keeping programs that help working-class people and keep prices down, such as making sure that Medicare can negotiate drug prices, which brings down the price for everybody? Where do they stand?

The hearings glaringly show that Donald Trump and his nominees are on the side of the very powerful, and that we Democrats, who are asking the questions, are on the side of working people. And as the hearings wind through and we go through more and more witnesses, it will become clearer and clearer to the American people who is on whose side.

So, it's important to have a record of these nominees even if they get confirmed in the end, to see who they are, to guard against the dangers that might occur with them in office, and to show who is on whose side.

Few nominees illustrate what is at stake for working class families better than Donald Trump's pick for OMB Director, Mr. Russell Vought. This is one of the most influential positions in the entire White House, responsible for not only producing the President's Budget but also executing the President's agenda cross the Executive Branch.

I'll be candid. Mr. Vought's appointment to OMB Director would be a nightmare scenario for working Americans. It is difficult to imagine a worse choice to implement White House policy than the chief architect of Project 2025. Let me repeat that, because our Republican friends don't want to talk about Project 2025, but at the same time, they're likely to vote for someone who was the chief architect of the project in a powerful position to implement it, head of OMB.

You cannot, you simply cannot, be pro-worker and support the nomination of Russell Vought. The last time he worked at the White House, Mr. Vought pushed radical budget proposals that gutted Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and funding for public health.

During the last default crisis, Mr. Vought was a key advisor to hard-right Republicans, who pushed America to the brink of disaster by using the debt ceiling as blackmail to cut trillions in funding for health care, for seniors, for hungry kids.

When Congress did not appropriate Donald Trump's border wall, Vought raided the accounts of the Pentagon and the Treasury Department to pay for it.

And on top of it all, Mr. Vought put America's national security at risk by illegally withholding foreign aid to Ukraine in an attempt to help Donald Trump on the campaign trail.

To call Mr. Vought an extremist would frankly give extremists a bad name. The only people in America who can be happy about Mr. Vought are the richest of the rich, who would make a killing if Donald Trump and Republicans hand them another trillion dollar tax cut.

Again, let me repeat. This is the chief architect of Project 2025. Republicans are running away from that project now, but at the same time they're putting its chief architect in one of the most powerful positions in the federal government, which has broad range across just about every policy.

So, today's hearing with Mr. Vought is a reminder to the American people that Donald Trump does not intend to keep his promises to working people. If Donald Trump were serious about being pro-worker, he would not have turned to the Godfather of the ultra-right to oversee White House Policy.

The tragic fires in California are another warning that the climate crisis continues to grow in strength. The scientific community across the world, from the UN to NASA to even national security experts, agree that ignoring climate change is dangerous.

So, Donald Trump's nominee for Energy Secretary is truly alarming: oil executive Chris Wright.

Everything you need to know about who Mr. Wright is and what he'll fight for can be found in the following quote he once gave in an interview: "Oil and gas make the world go round."

Mr. Wright amassed his wealth in fracking and as an oil executive, so of course he thinks oil and gas are the only things that count in the world! An article from the New York Times this morning called him an "evangelist" for fossil fuels.

What makes Mr. Wright so troubling, however, is that he is perfectly willing to admit that climate change is happening while rejecting that we should do anything about it. He says calling climate change a crisis is pure fear mongering. He says the real crisis is that not enough people are using hydrocarbons. Imagine, that's what he said: not enough people are using hydrocarbons. That's the crisis in the world. Can you believe it?

He even says that roadblocks to unrestrained fossil fuel development are outright "immoral." This man is an extremist when it comes to energy issues. He's not even among the conservative mainstream - he's so far over.

What a shock this is! A wealthy oil executive thinks that the solutions to the world's problems is to produce more oil! This is who Donald Trump wants leading America's energy policy!

Mr. Wright's nomination should be an alarm bell for every single American who has gotten a job recently at battery plants, EV factories, and other good paying clean jobs. Many of these Americans are in red states that trusted Donald Trump to look after them.

But as far as Donald Trump's pick for Energy Secretary is concerned, he thinks "we're not in the midst of an energy transition." That's his words. Tell that to the workers in rural America building EV batteries and wind and solar. I hope our Republican colleagues will repeat those words to the employees in their districts who have gotten good-paying jobs in the new clean energy industries.

Everyone knows that we still have a lot of work to do before we reach our clean energy goals, and everyone knows it's not going to be easy. The question is whether or not Donald Trump's administration is going to protect the clean jobs we have created, or kill them and put people out of work for the sake of Big Oil.

Mr. Wright's nomination suggests that Donald Trump is willing to let all those good paying clean energy jobs that we've created disappear.

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