Senate finance committee member urges colleagues to reject two administration nominees over child-welfare and Treasury privacy concerns

An unnamed member of the Senate Committee on Finance on the hearing floor criticized two administration nominees and urged colleagues to vote against both. The remarks targeted Dr. Adams, nominated to be assistant secretary for family support at the Department of Health and Human Services, and Jonathan McKernan, nominated for undersecretary of domestic finance at the Department of the Treasury.

The senator said that, after reviewing Dr. Adams' record and committee questioning, the nominee’s actions belie his stated priorities on child safety. "He talks an encouraging game with respect to safety and helping families, but a look at his record shows something very different," the senator said, listing specific allegations that Dr. Adams "weakened oversight standards for residential treatment facilities," "defunded programs in Idaho that supported kids with disabilities and their families," and "oversaw the rollback of staffing standards for childcare facilities in Idaho." The senator added that these changes left "a significant number of kids and families" harmed, according to the speaker’s staff review.

The senator also criticized what they described as evasive answers during the confirmation hearing when members asked Dr. Adams to commit to ensuring that congressionally appropriated funds for programs like Head Start reach the intended recipients. When pressed, the senator said, Dr. Adams "just didn't answer." The lawmaker said they intend to hold the nominee to commitments made during questioning and announced they would make the committee's recent findings on alleged mistreatment of LGBTQ youth in residential facilities part of the hearing record, a request the chair approved without objection.

On Jonathan McKernan, the senator raised data-privacy concerns tied to the Treasury Department’s recent control of a federal payment system. The senator said McKernan "basically said, there's just no there there" when asked about the implications of that takeover for taxpayer privacy. The senator added that the American people deserve clarity about "what the department is doing with their personal information" and accused the administration of "stonewalling" on the issue, calling the system the "Fort Knox of people's personal information." The lawmaker said McKernan had failed to demonstrate he would protect taxpayer data.

The senator referenced Senator Cantwell's long-standing work on privacy issues and urged colleagues to vote no on both nominees. "With that, I respectfully urge my colleagues to vote no on both of these individuals," the senator said before yielding back to the chair.

The committee was preparing to vote on the nominations; the transcript records the criticisms and the request to enter investigatory findings into the record but does not show final vote outcomes in this excerpt.