Confirmation Battle Begins on Capitol Hill: What to Expect

A big confirmation battle begins this week on Capitol Hill. Republicans want to move quickly to put President-Elect Donald Trump's cabinet in place. But Democrats say the confirmation process is moving too fast.

Two Trump cabinet confirmation hearings are scheduled for Tuesday, and five more on Wednesday. 
 
Among them: Sen. Jeff Sessions for attorney general, Betsy Devos for education secretary,  Mike Pompeo for CIA director, Rex TIllerson for secretary of state and Elaine Chao for transportation secretary.

The confirmations of Sessions, Tillerson, and Devos are expected to be the most contentious. But Democrats changed the rules when they controlled the Senate; now nominees only need a simple majority to gain Senate approval. 
 
Democrats want to slow down the process because background checks have yet to be completed on most of Trump's cabinet picks.

Republicans argue the president-elect has the right to have most of his cabinet in place when he takes office. But the director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics says the fast pace of the hearings is putting undue pressure on investigators who are reviewing the backgrounds of the nominees

But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says it's no more pressure than when Obama first came into office. The Senate approved seven picks the first day of Obama's presidency. 

"We didn't like most of them either," said McConnell. "But he won the election."

"All of these little procedural complaints are related to their frustration in having not only lost the White House but having lost the Senate," said McConnell. "I understand that, but we need to sort of grow up here and get past that."

In their final days in office, both the president and vice president made some last minute digs against Trump. 
 
Vice President Joe Biden said the president-elect needs to "grow up" and stop tweeting inflammatory statements.

And Obama suggested the same in a final interview with ABC's George Stephanapolous. The president suggested Trump needs to learn the difference between campaigning and governing.

"As soon as you walk into this office after you've been sworn in you're now in charge of the largest organization on earth. You can't manage it the way you manage a family business," insisted Obama.

The president also said he thinks his signature law, Obamacare, will survive, though he admits it may be called something else.

"My hope is the president-elect, members of Congress from both parties look at where have we objectively made progress, where things are working better. Don't undo things just because I did them," said Obama.

He added he doubts the Republicans will come up with a better system than Obamacare.

On Friday, after an intelligence briefing on Russian hacking, the president-elect admitted Russia, China and others are consistently trying to hack a number of U.S. institutions. 

Trump responded to intelligence agency findings that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the hack of the DNC computers saying, "There was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election."

While many members of the U.S. Congress have expressed concern over the vulnerability of the United States to foreign computer hacks, many express doubts and say there is little substance to the intelligence reports. 
 
Among the skeptics is former CIA Director Michael Hayden who said he had a "sense of disappointment" about a lack of specifics after reading the intelligence report 
 
Regardless, even those who believe the U.S. intelligence findings on Russian hacking fell short, there's growing consensus throughout Washington that the government --and U.S. corporations -- need to beef up anti-hacking, cyber security efforts.