The Senate Banking Committee voted 13-11, along party lines, on Thursday to advance Scott Turner’s nomination to be secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, with Democrats voting no over concerns about Turner’s unfinished FBI background check.
If confirmed by the full Senate, the NFL veteran and former developer would run a department with a $70 billion budget and roughly 8,000 employees at a time when housing has risen to the forefront politically after costs soared in the wake of the pandemic.
Turner told the committee during his confirmation hearing last week that “HUD is failing at its most basic mission,” pointing to the high cost of housing and a recent surge in homelessness. But he offered few specifics on how he would turn things around, saying he wanted first to take stock of which programs are working and which aren’t.
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