By: Heather Caygle
JAM JAM JAM— Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has teed up a disastrous schedule for Democrats next week, jamming the chamber’s major events into one day and likely hampering a long-time Democratic strategy to attack Trump’s cabinet nominees and slow down the confirmation process. McConnell has scheduled “six Cabinet-level confirmations hearings for next Wednesday, Jan. 11, the same day the chamber will likely slog through an all-night vote-a-rama on a budget and the president-elect will give his first press conference in six months,” Burgess and Seung Min report.
The likely result? Too many news events to result in a comprehensive focus on any one nominee. “There is a whole lot of: ‘Don’t watch what we’re doing here,” said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the No. 3 Democratic senator. More: http://politi.co/2jbdkjh
IN OTHER CONFIRMATION NEWS, two progressive advocacy groups are gearing up a campaign to squeeze Senate Republicans over the nomination of Betsy DeVos for secretary of Education. End Citizens United and Every Voice, two organizations that push for campaign finance reform, are launching a petition Friday calling on the five GOP senators who sit on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee – which will hold DeVos’s confirmation hearing Jan. 11 – and have received campaign funds from the DeVos family to recuse themselves from voting for her.
Who’s on the list: Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Tim Scott of South Carolina, Todd Young of Indiana, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Richard Burr of North Carolina. The groups are also planning paid digital ads as part of the new campaign.