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		</div><p>Republicans have suspended Senate committee rules to muscle through President Donald Trump&#8217;s pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency toward a confirmation vote after Democrats boycotted a meeting.</p>
<p>It was the latest sign of political hostilities on Capitol Hill as Senate Democrats used parliamentary procedure to delay votes on some of Mr Trump&#8217;s Cabinet nominees and Republicans used their slim Senate majority to advance and approve them.</p>
<p>The seats reserved for the 10 Democrats on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee were empty for a second consecutive day as the scheduled meeting to discuss to nomination of Scott Pruitt was brought to order.</p>
<p>Committee rules require that at least two members of the minority party be present for a vote to be held.<br />
The 11 Republicans voted unanimously to suspend those rules and then voted again to advance the nomination of Mr Pruitt, the state attorney general of Oklahoma.</p>
<p>Committee chairman John Barrasso accused the absent Democrats of engaging in delay and obstruction.</p>
<p>&#8220;It is unprecedented for a minority to delay the nominee of incoming president to this extent,&#8221; said Mr Barrasso, of Wyoming. &#8220;Elections have consequences.&#8221;</p>
<p>Despite the rhetoric from the committee&#8217;s Republicans, the Democrats appeared to have borrowed directly from their opponent&#8217;s playbook.</p>
<p>In 2013, GOP members of the same committee boycotted a similar committee meeting on Gina McCarthy, President Barack Obama&#8217;s then-nominee for EPA administrator.</p>
<p>Ms McCarthy was eventually approved by the Senate, serving in the post until Mr Trump&#8217;s inauguration earlier this month.</p>
<p>Mr Barrasso has said that is not an &#8220;apples-to-apples&#8221; comparison since Mr Obama was not then a new, first-term president building his team.</p>
<p>Democratic members of the committee said this week the boycott was necessary because Mr Pruitt has refused to fully respond to requests for additional information.</p>
<p>&#8220;For more than a month, Mr Pruitt has not fully responded to inquiries, questions for the record or requests for information on his record and views on clean air, clean water and climate change,&#8221; said Democratic Senator Ed Markey, of Massachusetts.</p>
<p>&#8220;Senate Democrats and the American public have a right to basic information from all of Donald Trump&#8217;s nominees, including Scott Pruitt, before taking votes on them in committee or on the Senate floor.&#8221;</p>
<p>President Trump&#8217;s pick to run the White House budget office has also been approved.</p>
<p>The Senate budget and homeland security committees approved South Carolina Republican Congressman Mick Mulvaney for a vote by the full Senate.</p>
<p>The move came over the opposition of Democrats, who warn of his support for cutting rising costs of medicare and increasing the age for claiming social security benefits.</p>
<p>Mr Mulvaney was among the tea party lawmakers who backed a government shutdown in 2013 in an attempt to block the Affordable Care Act from taking place.</p>
<p>In 2011, he was among those against increasing the government&#8217;s borrowing cap.</p>
<p>Mr Mulvaney easily sidestepped a controversy in which he failed to pay payroll taxes on a nanny he employed between 2000 and 2004.</p>
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