President Donald Trump will have to wait at least one more day before knowing whether his choice for budget chief will be confirmed by the Senate committees reviewing his case.
Nominee Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., on Tuesday afternoon had been scheduled to face confirmation votes in two Senate committees. But Tuesday evening the Senate budget committee postponed its vote until Thursday, and Wednesday morning the second vote was postponed. Mulvaney had faced some hard questions about his failure to pay taxes on a nanny 15 years ago, but Republicans seem to believe he had come out of the hearings in good shape.
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., the ranking opposition member on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, opened a 9:40 a.m. meeting Wednesday by asking for time to review an FBI file that had arrived in her hands only half an hour before.
The senator made it clear that the reason for asking for the postponement was simply that she had questions and not that there “is this big lurking thing out there.”
“This speaks to the speed with which all of this is happening,” she said after the hearing.
McCaskill, a former prosecutor and state auditor in Missouri, said she wouldn’t have any further comment until she’d had a chance to get answers from Mulvaney. Mulvaney, one of the leading fiscal conservatives in Congress, appears to be on track to get the required majority vote in at least one and probably both committees. A majority vote in either committee would send his nomination to the full Senate for a vote, where Republicans hold a 52-48 advantage, as well as the potential tie-breaking vote in Vice President Mike Pence.
The Homeland Security vote was rescheduled simply for Thursday with no time given.
Matthew Schofield: 202-383-6066, @mattschodcnews