LIVE: More Trump Nominees Have Senate Confirmation Hearings
Today we have Scott Bessent (Treasury), Lee Zeldin (EPA), Doug Bergum (Interior), and Scott Turner (HUD).
More of President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees have their Senate confirmation hearings.
I’m most interested in Scott Bessent’s hearing for Treasury since Sen. Elizabeth Warren has a spot on the committee.
Pam Bondi’s hearing today is only for witnesses.
Scott Bessent, Treasury Secretary
Opening Statement
CNN has snippets of Bessent’s opening statement:
In his opening statement, released ahead of the hearing, Bessent outlines his economic priorities, including making the 2017 tax cuts permanent, a more aggressive trade agenda and focusing on productive investment over “wasteful spending that drives inflation.”
“Today, I believe that President Trump has a generational opportunity to unleash a new economic golden age that will create more jobs, wealth and prosperity for all Americans,” Bessent will say, according to his opening statement.
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In his opening statement, Bessent details how he grew up in “the South Carolina Low Country” and started working at the age of nine after his father “fell into extreme financial difficulty.”
Notably, Bessent worked under George Soros, helping the billionaire and liberal donor famously “break” the Bank of England in the early 1990s by successfully betting against the British pound.
“My life has been the ‘only in America’ story that I am determined to preserve for future generations,” Bessent says in his statement.
Biography
Bessent, the founder and CEO of global macro investment firm Key Square Group, was a key economic policy adviser and fundraiser for the Trump campaign.
He has been an advocate for economic policies like lower taxes, spending restraint and deregulation that have long made up the core of the Republican Party’s platform, and has also been supportive of Trump’s use of tariffs in trade negotiations.
At an event hosted by the Manhattan Institute earlier this year, Bessent suggested that Trump should pursue a three-point plan of targeting 3% economic growth, reducing the deficit to 3% of U.S. gross domestic product and to boost domestic energy production by 3 million barrels of oil a day.
He has also been supportive of Trump’s plan to reduce regulations on cryptocurrencies and digital assets. Bessent has also argued that mass deportations of illegal immigrants would be less costly than the status quo given the cost of crime and fentanyl deaths.
Bessent previously taught at Yale University. He worked at Soros Fund Management (SFM) from 1991 to 2005, starting as a partner and eventually leading the firm’s London office. After starting his own venture and working at another firm, he returned to SFM from 2011 to 2015 as chief investment officer, before he left to found his investment firm, Key Square Group.
Lee Zeldin, EPA Administrator
Opening Remarks
Fox News has some of Zeldin’s prepared remarks:
Zeldin’s prepared remarks for his confirmation hearing show he wants to lead the EPA effectively while also avoiding “suffocating the economy.”
“Our mission is simple, but essential: To protect human health and the environment. We must do everything in our power to harness the greatness of American innovation with the greatness of American conservation and environmental stewardship. We must ensure we are protecting our environment, while also protecting our economy,” Zeldin is expected to say.
“The American people elected President Trump last November in part due to serious concerns about upward economic mobility and their struggle to make ends meet. Too many of our fellow Americans are trapped in poverty and desperate for a whole-of-government approach to give them a hand up. We can, and we must, protect our precious environment without suffocating the economy,” his remarks continue.
“A big part of this will require building private sector collaboration to promote common sense, smart regulation that will allow American innovation to continue to lead the world,” he adds.
Doug Bergum, Interior Secretary
Opening Remarks
The Daily Wire reported some of Burgum’s opening remarks:
After laying out his background and experience, Burgum will endorse a “big stick” approach to energy and production, a reference to former President Theodore Roosevelt’s advice to “speak softly and carry a big stick.”
“When energy production is restricted in America, it doesn’t reduce demand, it just shifts production to countries like Russia, Venezuela, and Iran – whose autocratic leaders don’t care about the environment,” Burgum will say.
“In our time, President Trump’s Energy Dominance can be America’s ‘big stick’ that is leveraged to achieve historic prosperity and world peace. The Department of the Interior – in cooperation with U.S. Congress, this committee, and the states – will play a pivotal role in achieving the outcomes to make the world safer and America even better for our children, grandchildren, and generations to come,” Burgum will say.
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“In North Dakota, we created a prosperous economy by sustainably developing our natural resources with respect for our land and wildlife while having among the cleanest air and water in the country. During our tenure, North Dakota experienced among the lowest unemployment in the nation and top real GDP growth. Demographically, we went from one of the oldest states to the youngest. And we attracted record levels of talent and investment capital,” Burgum will say.
Scott Turner, Housing & Urban Development Secretary
Biography
Scott Turner, a former NFL player, worked in Trump’s first term. From Fox News:
Turner, who is chair of the Center for Education Opportunity, previously served as executive director of the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council (WHORC).
“Scott is an NFL Veteran, who, during my First Term, served as the First Executive Director of the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council (WHORC), helping to lead an Unprecedented Effort that Transformed our Country’s most distressed communities,” Trump said at the time.
“Those efforts, working together with former HUD Secretary, Ben Carson, were maximized by Scott’s guidance in overseeing 16 Federal Agencies which implemented more than 200 policy actions furthering Economic Development,” he added. “Under Scott’s leadership, Opportunity Zones received over $50 Billion Dollars in Private Investment!”
Turner, a graduate of the University of Illinois, played cornerback for the Washington Redskins before winning a state house race in Texas. He served in the Texas House of Representatives from 2013 to 2017.
During Trump’s first term, Turner served as the executive director of the WHORC — aimed at helping the country’s “distressed communities across America,” according to its website.
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Comments
The only thing these ‘hearings’ have done is demonstrate what a joke they are for either party at this point.
NOBODY, on either side, is actually trying to learn anything or find out something they didn’t know about the nominee.
They’re all just looking for a sound byte.
Which to some degree is good, IMO.
Democrats have been playing this game for 20 years, while the RINO establishment Republicans were still pretending that the most radical D nominees deserved a ‘good-faith’ hearing.
Conservatives are finally sick of it. The Democrat nonsense isn’t swaying a single vote on a single person.
You are right about these hearings being theater. If Joni Ernst supports Hegseth…what is the point. I mean come on.
Cantwell waxes rhapsodic about 16 million jobs “created” under the Biden regime, when most of those robs merely represent jobs that came back after the staggering economic devastation and unemployment that were directly caused by the Dhimmi-crats’ Wuhan virus lockdowns and diktats.
The Dhimmi-crats are the most fiscally illiterate cretins imaginable.
EPA and climate change deniers.
Climate change is not a hoax! The climate started changing as soon as there was a climate. The Earth has been both warmer and cooler than it is now. Which one is correct, and who gets to choose? The real hoax is the notion that humans can control earth’s temperature. It is just a scheme to control trillions of dollars, tax dollars.
I can look out my window and see climate, who denies it exists?
Whitehouse is such an ass. Showing parts of RI that are going to flood because icebergs or glaciers or something. I thought the coasts were going to be under water by 1980? Keep saying it and in 10,000 years it might actually happen.
Yet all the rich elites still keep buying beach property at record high prices.
Vile narcissist-incompetent-dunce, Obama, and, his equally wretched wife, are so terrified at the prospect of “climate change” and the alleged threat posed to coastal environs, they were compelled to purchase palatial, beachside mansions on Marth’s Vineyard and in Hawaii.