Is the Tammy Duckworth nomination in trouble?

[jefferson_dem]

Is the Tammy Duckworth nomination in trouble?
by: Matt
Fri Mar 13, 2009 at 08:00:00 AM EDT

On Feb 3, the White House announced that Tammy Duckworth would be nominated to be Assistant Secretary of Public and Intergovernmental Affairs for the Department of Veterans Affairs. But we noted on Sunday that her nomination seemed to be making no progress, and now we have more information that her nomination may be in trouble.

<SNIP>

There have been 87 nominations announced by the White House, and 66 have been submitted to the Senate. Of the 49 nominees that were announced before Tammy Duckworth, all but 1 have been submitted to the Senate. (The exception is HHS Deputy Secretary Willliam Corr. Corr was announced when Daschle was still the HHS nominee, and it's reasonable that his nomination is on hold pending Sebelius' confirmation as HHS Secretary).

So what about the nominees announced after Duckworth? There have been 37 announced since Feb 3, and 18 of them have already been submitted to the Senate. This includes nominees which were announced on March 11, just two days ago, and 5 weeks after Duckworth was announced. In fact, every nominee announced before Feb 25 has been submitted to the Senate, except for Duckworth (and Corr).

On Wednesday night, DCW emailed the White House Press Office, asking about three nominees who had not been submitted to the Senate: Duckworth, Ivan Fong, General Counsel, Dept. of Homeland Security and W. Scott Gould, Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs, all announced within a couple of days of each other. We never heard back, but, amazingly, Fong and Gould's names both appeared on the Senate list of nominee submissions during the day on Thursday. But Duckworth was nowhere to be found.

Outside of the one story linked above, there has been very little news on Duckworth's nomination. Nothing on Duckworth making the rounds of Senator's offices, which is common in the weeks between announcement and hearing. On the other hand, there's been no news of a vetting issue, or concerns by any Senator. So the question we asked of the White House, Why hasn't Tammy Duckworth's name been submitted to the Senate 5-1/2 weeks after her nomination was announced, remains unanswered.

http://www.demconwatchblog.com/diary/1108/is-the-tammy-duckworth-nomination-in-trouble

[mucifer]

1. I hope everything is ok. I like Tammy.