Deirdre Shesgreen

dshesgreen@usatoday.com

WASHINGTON - Led by Sen. Sherrod Brown, a clutch of Senate Democrats temporarily blocked committee votes on two of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees.

The Senate Finance Committee was scheduled to vote Tuesday morning on Steve Mnuchin, tapped by the new president to be Treasury secretary. But Brown and other Democrats refused to attend the session, thus denying Republicans a quorum and preventing the vote from occurring.

The committee was also scheduled to vote Tuesday on Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, GOP Rep. Tom Price of Georgia.

Brown, D-Ohio, has vociferously opposed Mnuchin, and his objections morphed into fury on Sunday, after the Columbus Dispatch reported that OneWest, a bank led by Mnuchin, used "robo-signing" in its foreclosure process – in direct contradiction of the nominee's testimony to the Senate committee. Robo-signing is when a bank employee signs mortgage documents without reviewing them or ensuring their accuracy.

The practice allowed some banks to foreclose on homes without verifying that the owners had defaulted on their loans.

"People lost their homes because of what his bank did," Brown said in an interview with The Enquirer on Tuesday. "That’s pretty serious and … now he wants to be Secretary of Treasury?"

On Monday, Brown reached out to Sen. Roy Wyden, D-Ore., the top Democrat on the Finance Committee. Brown said they were also both "incensed" about a Wall Street Journal story reporting that Price received a special private offer to buy a biomedical stock at a discount – again in direct contradiction to this testimony before the Senate committee.

With a green light from Wyden, Brown began calling and pigeonholing the other Democrats on the committee, to see if they could get unanimous agreement to boycott the hearing. He said he worked the phones until about 11 p.m. on Monday night, and then the Democrats huddled in Wyden's office on Tuesday morning, just minutes before the hearing was set to begin.

Sen. Bob Casey Jr., D-Pa., said they went in without a consensus on the right strategy but emerged unified on the decision to boycott.

"These are significant questions, either where the nominee has directly contradicted themselves on the record or there’s a lack of clarity or completeness," Casey said. In Mnuchin's case, he said, "it's very clear, right on a piece of paper, where there’s a conflict" between what he said and what the evidence shows.

The move by Brown and his fellow Senate Democrats infuriated Republicans in Congress and at the White House. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., accused the Democrats of sowing “chaos,” while White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer called the move “outrageous.”

“It’s unfortunate the Senate Democrats remain so out of touch with the message that the American people sent this past November," Spicer said. "The people want change, President Trump is delivering that change, and the only response from Senate Democrats so far is to try to stall the core functions of our government."

But Brown said previous nominees have tanked for much less.

"In a normal time, the majority party would just say 'you should withdraw to these two'," Brown argued. "But they didn’t, so we are saying we don’t want this committee to vote until the public knows and we know" the full story behind both Mnuchin's bank foreclosures and Price's stock dealings.

Republicans on the panel were caught by surprise, and they blasted the Democrats move as an unprecedented “dereliction of duty” and a partisan jab that would damage comity in the Senate.

“It’s hard for me to understand this,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, the panel’s chairman. “These are two really fine men. Both are sacrificing financially and otherwise to serve the country.”

He called the Democrats move “amazingly stupid,” adding: “I hope they’ll get their heads on right.”

After a short meeting attended only by a handful of Republicans, Hatch was forced to recess the session. He said he would reschedule the vote as soon as possible.

Brown said he and other Democrats will continue their boycott until Price and Mnuchin agree to answer more questions, either in writing or before the committee.

"They lied to the committee about things that matter to people’s lives," Brown said. "Imagine what happens to your family if you lose your home and you have nothing. That’s what this guy did and this guy profited off it," he said of Mnuchin.

Brown even suggested that Trump should be thankful to Senate Democrats for demanding more information on his nominees.

"In many ways, we did the president a favor by unearthing this stuff ... (and working) to slow this vote down until we know everything," Brown said. Otherwise negative reports could have come out after they were confirmed, he said, and "then there would have been a scandal in the Trump administration."

Asked about Brown's demands for another hearing or additional questions, Hatch said flatly, "I'm not going to do that."

He said the Democrats had plenty of time to question both nominees, and he dismissed the Wall Street Journal and Dispatch reports as "phony stuff."

Asked if he would change the rules to allow a vote to proceed without a quorum, Hatch wavered--first saying he might, then saying he wasn't sure.

"We'll have to see," Hatch said. "There’s a bunch of things we can do."