The US Senate is finally set to hold a floor vote on Monday to decide on the confirmation of Vivek Murthy, President Barack Obama’s Indian-American nominee for the key post of US Surgeon General.
In a rare weekend session on Saturday, Murthy cleared the first procedural hurdle by a vote of 52-40. It remains to be seen how the final vote plays out.
It’s a now-or-never situation for Murthy, since the Republicans are set to take control of the Senate from January, after the drubbing the Democrats suffered in the Congressional elections last month.
Murthy’s confirmation has been hanging fire for more than a year, with Republican Senators raising strong objections during a hearing last February over his previous sharp comments on gun control that have made him a target of America’s powerful gun lobby, namely the National Rifles Association.
As a campaign activist for Obama earlier, Murthy has been an overt supporter of far-reaching gun control measures, including a ban on assault weapons.
Amid apprehensions that several Democratic Senators, too, may vote against Murthy over the gun control issue, the White House opted for delay in seeking the confirmation vote.
In recent days, however, there has been frenetic activity with the Senate Democratic leadership, at the bidding of the White House, making an all-out bid to get a whole lot of pending nominations cleared before the Republicans take control of the chamber.
Besides Murthy, the Obama nominees awaiting confirmation include Tony Blinken for the post of Deputy Secretary of State, Sarah Saldana as head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Carolyn Colvin as head of Social Security Administration.
An alumnus of the prestigious Yale and Harvard universities, the 37-year-old Murthy has been a strong supporter of “Obamacare”, the US President’s ambitious health-care initiative.
Said to be an Obama acolyte right from the time he plunged into the 2008 White House race, Murthy is co-founder and president of “Doctors for America”, which began as “Doctors for Obama” bringing together some 10,000 physicians and medical students in support of his election campaign. With the passage of “Obamacare” in 2009, Murthy’s group relaunched itself as an advocacy group for the Affordable Care Act.