Dems Lunge Into Confirmation Fight

Democrats and the White House are hammering Senate Republicans for failing to act on a nominee who is charged with snipping the purse strings of Islamic extremists.

Adam Szubin was nominated to be the Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial crimes nearly three months ago but has yet to receive a hearing from the Senate Banking Committee responsible for vetting him.

The Senate Banking Committee has not announced public plans to move on Szubin’s nomination. A representative for Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) did not respond to repeated inquiries from The Hill.

The administration tried to shift the focus to Szubin on Monday as President Obama met with Pentagon brass to discuss the military campaign against ISIS.

Much of the Treasury Department’s recent time has been spent analyzing sanctions on Iran, amid the possibility that they could be rolled back under a deal to limit that country’s nuclear capacity. On Tuesday, international negotiators further delayed the deadline for that deal to July 10.

As a key member of that sanctions team, any hearing on Szubin’s nomination could turn into a slugfest over the Obama administration’s Iran policy.

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“To put it mildly, it would be a very spirited discussion, if not downright acrimonious,” said Jonathan Schanzer, the vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former terrorism finance analyst at the Treasury Department.

“You can see how it could benefit Adam, but also just imagine it starts off of that, it would be difficult as well.”

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