[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 24 (Wednesday, February 5, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S609-S610]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Cabinet Nominations

  Mr. SCHMITT. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the impressive 
pace by which this body is confirming President Trump's nominees to 
important Cabinet positions, to fulfill his agenda and his promises to 
the American people.
  I think it is important to take a step back. November is a few months 
now in the rearview mirror, but President Trump completed the greatest 
political comeback in American history.
  The Democrats did everything they could, including trying to jail him 
and bankrupt his family, to prevent him from stepping foot in the Oval 
Office--never again.
  Well, guess what. On January 20, as we stood in that Rotunda, he 
completed that journey back--a journey that was highlighted by a reform 
agenda.
  So what we see happening right now that the legacy media and my 
Democrat friends are losing their minds on every day was every single 
thing that he talked about: securing our border, being energy dominant, 
restoring accountability back in government, restoring our place on the 
world stage, after 4 years of humiliation, 4 years of lawlessness.
  And just to give a few examples that the Supreme Court weighed in on, 
the student loan debt forgiveness scam--President Biden had no ability 
to do that. And I do find it interesting that my Democrat colleagues 
are, all of a sudden, talking about things that Presidents can and 
can't do.
  Imperial Biden, with a stroke of his pen, tried to wipe out half a 
trillion dollars' worth of student loan debt. They were sued. I 
actually happened to file that lawsuit as attorney general of Missouri, 
and we won at the Supreme Court because the Supreme Court said: You 
can't do it.

  Do you know what Joe Biden's response was? ``Yeah, I don't really 
care about that.'' He kept trying to do it, and then he would get 
struck down over and over with each failed attempt.
  He tried to force a vaccination, the COVID shot, on 100 million 
Americans through OSHA. An Agency that was created to make sure 
forklifts beep when they back up was suddenly now forcing a medical 
procedure on a third of the country.
  The censorship enterprise directed Agencies to coordinate, collude, 
coerce with Big Tech companies to silence conservative speech.
  This all happened in 4 years, and the American people sat in a jury 
box and watched all this. They saw it play out. They didn't want to 
become a banana republic. They didn't want lawfare to be weaponized to 
take out political opponents. And President Trump won the popular vote, 
including sweeping all of the battleground States.
  So now here we are with an opportunity for real reform. Some of those 
people are already in place. Pete Hegseth was already confirmed--I sit 
on the Armed Services Committee, along with Mr. President up here--and 
he promised to get rid of DEI. He is doing that. He promised to really, 
really focus in on China. He is doing that. He has talked about 
procurement reform. Our first hearing under Chairman Wicker was about 
procurement reform.
  We have some serious issues to get at, but DEI is poison. It has hurt 
recruiting. It divides the room, has no place in our military. It 
doesn't have any place in our government at all, which is why I filed 
legislation this week to just get rid of all of it writ large across 
the government. It is discriminatory. It is divisive. And I think 
actually now the fever has broke. People see it, and there is an 
opportunity for reform.
  Pam Bondi, who was confirmed yesterday and was just sworn in, was an 
excellent pick. I spoke on the Senate floor last night about why. I 
won't get into that all again, but we come from AG world. She is 
incredible, she is smart, she is respected, and she is going to restore 
credibility to the Department of Justice.
  There are a couple more people I just want to mention to highlight I 
think why the American people are very excited about the reform that is 
happening.
  We had the hearing of Kash Patel last week in the Judiciary 
Committee. I expect him to get confirmed as well.
  The FBI was weaponized against its own citizens to score political 
points and to settle debts. It went after traditional Catholics. I 
happen to be Catholic. It went after traditional Catholics, set up a 
spy network. Because of the religious affiliation of another American, 
the FBI spied on them and viewed them as domestic terrorists because 
they went to Latin mass.
  They also went after parents who had the audacity to show up at a 
school board meeting because they didn't like critical race theory in 
their classrooms. They were home during COVID. They saw what was 
happening. They didn't like it. They showed up to school board 
meetings. The teachers union complained. Joe Biden sent the guards out. 
Merrick Garland used the FBI to go after parents.
  Then, of course, there is the lawfare that we saw against President 
Trump.
  So Kash Patel is going to come in. He has a big job. The trust for 
the FBI is at an alltime low. It has plummeted. You can hardly argue 
with the reasons why. I laid out just a few. But, again, somebody that 
is going to come in and clean up.
  Then the last person I want to mention, because there are a lot of 
great nominees--and to the credit of Leader Thune, we will have gotten 
to I think 13 maybe by the end of this week, which is the pace that we 
used to be on before the last 8 years or so, back to the Obama years, 
when the President actually could get his team in place--is Russ Vought 
to be OMB Director.
  For those in the Gallery and those folks watching at home, the Office 
of

[[Page S610]]

Management and Budget deals with a lot of sort of the tentacles inside 
of government, where the wheels kind of turn, and you also get a 
glimpse of the opportunities to save money that have been neglected for 
far, far too long. We are $36 trillion in debt. We are going to have an 
opportunity to vote on him I think tomorrow. We will see.
  But the ``hair on fire'' histrionics we have heard the last couple 
days about--whether it is DOGE or Russ Vought, I am afraid my Democrat 
colleagues--they haven't hit rock bottom yet. They don't really get 
what November was about. They continue to be the ones that defend the 
status quo, the guardians of permanent Washington, of the establishment 
that--in an election cycle that was decided between the disrupters and 
the establishment, the people have weighed in.
  So let them defend it. I think it is a fight that we want because you 
can't really defend this kind of stuff: $45 million for diversity 
inclusion scholarships in Burma; $3 million for girl-centered climate 
action in Brazil; $125 million to racialize public health; $288,000 for 
diverse birdwatcher groups; USAID, which is in the center of the storm 
right now, and rightfully so, spent $1.5 billion to ``advance 
diversity, equity and inclusion in Serbia's workplaces and business 
communities''; $70,000 for the production of a DEI musical in Ireland; 
$2.5 million for electric vehicles for Vietnam; $47,000 for a 
transgender opera in Colombia--not Columbia, MO, or Columbia, SC, the 
country of Colombia; $32,000 for a transgender comic book in Peru; $2 
million for sex changes and LGBT activism in Guatemala; $6 billion to 
fund tourism in Egypt. This is what they are mad about, that the veil 
is coming down. Russ Vought is going to be part of this reform 
movement.
  It is amazing to me the response I often hear on this floor: Well, 
what is $2.5 million? What is $6 million? What is $1.5 million?
  Tell that to the truckdriver working his tail off. Tell that to the 
waitress who is working an extra shift to afford to send her kid to a 
school that she wants them to go to or a family saving up to go to 
Washington, DC, to show their kids our Nation's Capital. It is 
insulting. It is insulting to taxpayers.
  So a reckoning, indeed, is coming. It is coming, and we have been 
waiting for far too long to have accountability in our government. 
Business as usual just isn't working for working families anymore. So 
this team that President Trump has assembled and put together--I am 
excited for them to get to work. I am excited for a golden age of 
America. And I am excited for accountability finally to make its way to 
our Nation's Capital.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Banks). The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, over the last several weeks, we have 
worked at record pace here in the Senate on nominations. This has been 
one of those tasks that happen literally every time there is a new 
President that comes in, but the pace we have moved on nominations has 
been epic based on the last two terms of different Presidents. We have 
confirmed more people now in the Senate than were confirmed in the 
first 3 weeks of the Biden administration and in the first 3 weeks of 
the first Trump administration combined. It is because we have been 
willing to be able to run the clock and to be able to compress this.
  Now, the nominations process does take a long time. Every single one 
of the Cabinet officials requires 30 hours of debate here in the 
Senate. Each one of the other individuals requires 2 hours of debate 
here in the Senate, and we have 1,200 people total that we have to get 
through.

  But, at the beginning of this time period, we focused on the Cabinet-
level officials, moving, for instance, Marco Rubio the very first day 
of the President being inaugurated, and we came into this Chamber that 
evening and were able to move Marco Rubio.
  We started the hearings before the President was even sworn in, to be 
able to make sure that we are ready. We are literally doing hearings in 
committees, cueing up the next people, even as we are dealing with the 
folks that are on the floor, to be able to make sure we can move as 
rapidly as possible. This is not just about President Trump. It is 
about the United States and about us having a good operation for our 
government.
  Let me give you a ``for instance.''
  Mr. President, you know extremely well, because you were part of this 
group to be able to move him, but Sean Duffy was actually sworn in. His 
nomination was done, his hearings were done, we confirmed him on the 
floor of the Senate, and within 24 hours, we have gotten the worst 
airline disaster that we have had in 15 years. That Secretary of 
Transportation was literally on the frontline within 24 hours, dealing 
with a terrible accident.
  It is important that we have people in these roles.
  We moved Doug Collins yesterday. Doug Collins, who himself is an Air 
Force Reserve chaplain, a veteran himself, will now be leading the VA. 
He is able to step into that role today, taking care of all those 
issues because we were able to get him confirmed.
  Pam Bondi and all the issues that we need to be able to resolve 
within Justice--she can actually get started on those issues now 
because she has been confirmed. She is the new Attorney General of the 
United States.
  All these different roles, as we move through them and through the 
committees, are vital for us to be able to get done. We are fulfilling 
the task that we need to do, whether that be for Secretary of State in 
international policy and the chaos happening right now in the Middle 
East, or whether that is Scott Turner and his experience that he is 
going to bring dealing with Housing and Urban Development, and with 
people in poverty in our country that desperately are in need of 
getting access to housing. We are moving on these folks to make sure 
that we can actually fulfill the promise that needs to be fulfilled.
  Mr. President, I just want to be able to remind everyone, we have 
more to go. We are going to continue to be here this week to finish out 
the Office of Management and Budget and Russell Vought in that role, 
because if we are going to deal with spending and we are going to make 
the government more efficient, we have to have leadership in the Office 
of Management and Budget.
  That will be done this week, to make sure that we can continue to be 
able to implement the policies to be able to help the Nation to 
continue to move forward.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.