Republicans Delay Important Nominees, The American People Pay The Price (Harry Reid)

[struggle4progress]

October 29, 2009
Reid: While Republicans Delay Important Nominees, The American People Pay The Price

... The Senate has confirmed 366 of President Obama’s nominees. How does this compare historically? At this point in President Bush’s first term, 421 of his nominees were already at their desks. At this point in President Clinton’s first term, 379 nominees were on the job. And 480 of President Reagan’s nominees were confirmed ...

... Obama faced twice as many filibusters of his nominees in his first four months as President Bush faced in his first four years ...

Months ago, President Obama picked a trade expert who worked in the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations to be this nation’s Deputy Trade Representative. But she has yet to officially join the Obama administration. Why? Because a Republican Senator is holding up the nomination over a bill that he thinks would hurt tobacco companies.

If that seems like an unrelated, random reason to hold up this qualified nominee, you might be even more outraged to learn that the bill that so angers this Republican Senator is not even before the United States Senate. It’s not even in the United States House of Representatives. In fact, it’s not even in the United States. The bill is before the Canadian Parliament. It should go without saying that our Administration cannot dictate how the Canadian legislature does it job, any more than the Canadian Parliament can dictate how we do ours. It should go without saying, but unfortunately, we evidently must say it ...

As far as Republicans are concerned, no one is too important to block, no high-ranking position is too important to remain empty, no problem is too urgent to delay ...

http://www.democrats.senate.gov/newsroom/record.cfm?id=319457&

[Demeter]

1. Yes, We Know, Harry, Nothing Is Your Fault; You Can't Help It

when you're a miserable failure.

[struggle4progress]

2. "Party of No" Continues To Hold Obama Judges Hostage (Think Progress)

Last June, ThinkProgress reported that Senate conservatives were using single-senator anonymous holds to deny dozens of Obama nominees the up-or-down vote Republicans used to think was so important.

Four months later, nothing has changed. Since taking office last January, only four of President Obama’s judicial nominees have been confirmed, despite the fact that President Bush’s judges received very different treatment:

Consider, for example, the judicial nominations process during President George W. Bush’s last two years in office, 2007 and 2008. Bush was deeply unpopular at the time, and he faced a Senate firmly under Democratic control. Still, a large number of Bush nominees sailed through. The Senate voted on more than one-third of Bush’s confirmed nominees (26 of 68) less than three months after the president nominated them. <...>

The story was similar in the first two years of Bush’s presidency: A Democratic majority in Congress confirmed 100 of Bush’s nominees in 17 months ...

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/10/29/no-judges/

[struggle4progress]

3. It's Time To Stop The Right Wing's Efforts To Block Judge Nominees

... David Hamilton of Indiana, was nominated in March and has been approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee. He has yet to receive a vote in the full Senate.

What’s the hold-up? The Religious Right and its right-wing Senate allies don’t like the fact that Hamilton, as a lower court judge, issued an opinion striking down sectarian invocations in the Indiana House of Representatives. They also dislike an abortion-related ruling he issued.

No one argues that Hamilton is unqualified. He is a distinguished jurist, a graduate of Yale Law School and a Fulbright Scholar. He has served on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana for 15 years.

Opposition to Hamilton is driven by ideology. Some Religious Right groups and activists don’t like Hamilton’s rulings and have urged senators to use procedural ploys to slow his nomination ... Ironically, these same organizations protested loudly when Democrats were supposedly holding up judicial nominees during the presidency of George W. Bush ...

http://blog.au.org/2009/10/16/full-court-press-its-time-to-stop-the-right-wings-efforts-to-block-judge-nominees/

[struggle4progress]

4. With Obama Proceeding Reasonably To Fill Federal Judgeships, the Bottleneck Is the Senate

By CARL TOBIAS
Friday, October 30, 2009

Before Obama won the election, he had already started planning for appointments. And when he was elected, Obama quickly installed as White House Counsel Gregory Craig, a respected attorney with much pertinent expertise, who immediately enlisted several talented lawyers to identify judicial designees. The administration also capitalized on Vice President Joseph Biden's four decades of Senate Judiciary Committee experience in the nomination process. Accordingly, the selection group anticipated and carefully addressed contingencies that might arise when choosing judges. For example, it compiled "short lists" of excellent candidates for possible Supreme Court vacancies, should one arise.

Obama has emphasized bipartisan outreach, particularly by soliciting the advice of Democratic and Republican Judiciary Committee members, and of high-level party officials from the states where vacancies arise, and by doing so before final nominations. Obama has gradually, but steadily, put forward his nominees, typically naming a few on the same day. This approach compares favorably with the approach of the two prior administrations, which often submitted large packages on the eve of Senate recesses, thus complicating felicitous confirmation. To date, Obama has nominated 23 well-qualified consensus candidates, who are diverse in terms of ethnicity, gender and ideology. This is sufficient quantitatively and qualitatively to foster prompt confirmation ...

The Democratic panel majority .. has expedited review, but the Republican minority has delayed processing. For instance, it routinely delays committee votes for a week with no or minimal explanation.

This recently happened with four California District Court nominees, three of whom the panel then unanimously approved. And, last week, Senator Sessions held over Virginia Supreme Court Justice Barbara Keenan, even though he had praised the jurist's qualifications at her hearing two weeks earlier and despite the fact that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, to which she was nominated, desperately needs more judges, as the court is operating with five of its 15 judgeships vacant. In fairness, yesterday, Sessions explained that Keenan's responses to some GOP written questions were inadequate, but that she promptly furnished more complete answers that were satisfactory, again lauded the jurist as a "fine nominee," and supported the panel decision to vote her out without objection ...

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20091030_tobias.html

[struggle4progress]

5. McCain vows to hold up labor board nominee

By SAM HANANEL (AP) – Oct 21, 2009

WASHINGTON — Another Obama administration nominee is facing a GOP roadblock over his ties to labor unions.

Arizona Sen. John McCain said Wednesday he would place a hold on the confirmation of union lawyer Craig Becker to join the National Labor Relations Board, saying Becker might try to make labor laws more union friendly without congressional approval.

McCain made his comments just minutes before a Senate panel voted 15-8 to approve Becker's nomination. Under Senate rules, a single lawmaker can block a full vote on the Senate floor ...

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hJUX2JlS_4tPk3KpZvm-oLELHcUAD9BFMSJ00

[Demeter]

6. Fine! Let's Not Look At What Harry's Done for Us on Healthcare, Rights, Economics

Lets let him change the subject to something that isn't his fault, although it still is.

[Igel]

7. That's how it goes.

But Reid could cite more numbers to buttress his case.

Obama vs. Clinton? Not that big a difference, to be honest--13 out of 370. Note that both came to office with Dem majorities in both chambers. Both had similar problems pointed out in the press--for one reason or another they were slow in making nominations.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/nominations-and-appointments/ is useful in this regard.

547 nominees, including judges. Most of the ones confirmed needed from 1 to 2 months for confirmation. Not all. And some that were confirmed without much of a tussle waited for far more than 2 months.

13 have no nomination date. 48 were nominated in October. 56 in September--some of which were confirmed. So of the 547, over 100 were nominated late enough that you wouldn't expect them to be confirmed yet. So there are a few less than 450 that you'd expect to have confirmed by now. 366/450 doesn't seem outrageous--but you still have to wonder about those 80.

We've been told of repub-related problems with perhaps a couple dozen. Yeah, twice the number of fillibusters--but twice of a small number still tends to be a small number, however impressive it may sound. That leaves 60 that should have been confirmed, but with no explanation as to why. I'd note that 60/366 isn't just a huge percentage, however.

Overall there are 150 or more that have no repub-related holds or fillibusters (real or imagined) waiting for confirmation, at least not that we've heard about. So 80-90% of them are just held up for. . . ?

Bush II's judicial nominees were more numerous, and had a slightly higher appointment rate in the first 9 months (something like 11% of them vs. about 9% for Obama's), but that doesn't account for the huge spread. Why? Because numbers matter--you can't just look at percentages, however tempting it is when the percentages look so shocking. It's been noised that nearly all of Obama's judicial nominees have been blocked (which is hardly true, but the number of nominees is small enough that a few here or there makes a big difference). It's also been noised that Obama hasn't exactly been hustling to get nominees to Congress (given how many of the 547 names were submitted after the noisings started, it was probably reasonable criticism).

Now, many of them are for fairly picayune positions--granted, they have some authority, but not just an incredible amount. Still, the Senate should expedite nominations--vote yes or no on them. (As an aside, though, I'd also note that in some years with Bush II there was no concern for nominees. Reid's arguments were no less true for many of those appointees. Recall the FEC mess last year.)