Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee advanced President Trump's nominee for treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, and Trump's nominee for health secretary, Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), on Wednesday with zero Democrats present. To do so required committee chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) to suspend the committee rules, which normally require a quorum of at least one Democrat in the room in order to permit a vote.
Senate Democrats had refused to attend Mnuchin and Price's hearings Tuesday in a boycott intended to delay to proceedings. Price "outright lied to our committee," protested Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) in reference to a report that Price received an offer to buy a biomedical stock at a discount, contrary to what he said in his confirmation hearing.
Hatch called the Democrats' boycott "pathetic" and "amazingly stupid," and accused them Wednesday of "[choosing] to cower in the hallway."
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