Nomination of Samantha Power

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, as I have said many times in the past, Presidents should be given a good deal of discretion when choosing their political appointees, and so long as their nominees are qualified and do not obstruct the advice and consent process, the Senate should not stand in the way of their confirmation.

After all, Presidents are ultimately responsible for the actions of their administration. And if the buck truly stops at the Resolute Desk, they need to be able to trust their subordinates to get the job done.

That being said, I now come to the point of my coming to the floor; that I must vote no on the nomination of Samantha Power to be Director of USAID.

On February 18, I sent a letter to Ms. Power asking questions regarding emails that came out of her office during her time serving as U.N. Ambassador.

Heavily redacted versions of those emails obtained by my office appear to suggest that Ms. Power's staff may have been working behind the scenes to remove the Islamic Relief Agency from the U.S. Treasury Department's sanctions list.

That organization was placed on the sanctions list for what? Funneling money to terrorist groups, and, thus, removing it would allow that organization to receive private donations as well as taxpayer funds.

In her letter responding to my questions, Ms. Power claimed that she was not working to take the Islamic Relief Agency off the sanctions list. She further claimed that the emails in question were part of an effort to challenge false claims made by the Islamic Relief Agency at the U.N. denying their involvement in terrorist financing.

In order to verify her claims, I have requested, on multiple occasions, that she provide unredacted copies of the emails and complete answers to the questions that I posed in my original letter.

But after 3 months, all I have received is a collection of public press releases. I have not received the emails I requested. I have not received answers to my questions.

Normally, political appointees and nominees wait until after they are confirmed to start ignoring congressional inquiries, but in this case, it seems the Executive branch has decided advice and consent is going to be a mere formality, and there is no need to wait. This seems to be a pattern.

For instance, I asked the Secretary of HHS a number of specific questions for the record as part of the Finance Committee vetting process. I received responses that didn't even try to answer the substance of my questions.

I also asked Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to reconcile some conflicting information on her House financial disclosures and responses to questions for the record for the Energy Committee about her taxes. They weren't gotcha questions either. In fact, it was probably innocent mistakes on her part, if anything, but Secretary Haaland declined to respond at all.

Maybe the White House figures simply that they don't need Republican votes so they don't need to answer even routine vetting questions from Republicans, but then the White House can't blame Republicans for voting no on their nominees when they ignore our oversight questions.

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