On the recordJanuary 21, 2025
Mr. President, unfortunately, we were at the point of almost having a consent agreement to have a vote on the confirmation of John Ratcliffe to be CIA Director tomorrow--not today, not yesterday when it should have happened, but tomorrow--but the Senator from Connecticut has decided to object at the last minute. I don't really understand the objection to Mr. Ratcliffe. He was confirmed by this Senate to be the Director of National Intelligence. He was fully vetted through the bipartisan process in the Senate Intelligence Committee. We voted him out yesterday on a 14-to-3 vote. Senator Schumer stood here yesterday and talked about how we are going to cooperate on highly qualified, capable nominees with integrity, which John Ratcliffe is, but the only vote we got yesterday was Senator Rubio. Now we are not going to have a vote today, and apparently we are not going to have a vote tomorrow, which means I hope nobody is making any plans for the weekend or the evenings because we are going to get these nominees confirmed--starting with Mr. Ratcliffe and then moving on to Mr. Hegseth and moving on to Ms. Noem-- the easy way or the hard way. We tried to cooperate with the Democrats. The cooperation has not been forthcoming, so I guess it is going to be the hard way starting on Thursday. Mr.…





