While Americans served turkey and cleared their tables of turkey this holiday season, Senate Democrats have kept the Senate in pro forma session to block President George Bush from appointing what some Democrats consider political turkeys to key posts in the Senate’s absence:
With the nation’s attention focused on Thanksgiving leftovers and bargain shopping, the Senate held another brief but significant session on Friday as part of a continuing effort to prevent President Bush from making unconfirmed “recess” appointments.
The idea is to keep the Senate technically in session so Bush can’t use the lull to appoint people who were either rejected by the Senate’s elected members or so controversial that they couldn’t pass on a vote that would have required the administration to negotiate more extensively or submit a different appointee. CNN continues:
Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota took on the task of gaveling the Senate in and out of session; the formalities lasted approximately 28 seconds and no other senators were present. Dorgan followed Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia, who presided over a similarly brief meeting on Tuesday. By not going into recess, Democrats can prevent President Bush from filling federal government posts without going through the confirmation process. Dorgan’s holiday plans were not disrupted; he told CNN he was happy to preside, as he had already planned to be on Capitol Hill on Friday for an appropriations meeting.
The Democrats reportedly acted after going along with Bush on his Attorney General nomination but picked up rumors that the President planned to be a busy Decider indeed when they were off for the Thanksgiving holiday:
Democrats say they confirmed Attorney General Michael Mukasey, and now would like to see Bush nominate their candidates to Democratic openings on the Federal Communications Commission and other panels.
“I am committed to making that progress if the President will meet me half way,” Reid said. “But that progress can’t be made if the President seeks controversial recess appointments and fails to make Democratic appointments to important commissions.”
By law, the Senate can remain open by meeting in pro forma session once every three days. With rumors circulating that Bush planned to appoint controversial surgeon general nominee James W. Holsinger Jr. over the break, Reid scheduled a series of sessions.
A piece in the Wall Street Journal blasted the Democrats:
So who are these threats to the Republic? The Beltway rumor was that Public Enemy No. 1 was James Holsinger Jr., President Bush’s nominee for Surgeon General. The Kentucky cardiologist is an abomination to liberals because, 16 years ago, he wrote that gay sex is “incompatible with Christian teaching.” At his July confirmation hearing, he said that view, expressed in a church paper, “does not represent where I am today.”
If that’s the disqualifying standard, we could hardly fault Mr. Bush for bypassing the Senate to install Dr. Holsinger, who says he would use the Surgeon General’s bully pulpit to call attention to “the obesity epidemic.” Democrats have no plans to give him an up-or-down vote any time soon. But we’re told the Administration had no intention of giving Dr. Holsinger a recess post, and that his name never even came up in pre-recess negotiations with Mr. Reid. The hope was that a truce could be struck, as it was for the August break, in which some nominations would move in exchange for holding off on recess appointments. There are about 190 judicial and executive branch nominations waiting on Senate action….
Publicly, Mr. Reid blames the Administration for “stalled progress” on pro-forma Democratic recommendations for agencies that are bipartisan by law, like the FCC or the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. But the Democrats’ FERC nominee, for instance, is still undergoing security clearances, while others were submitted to the White House only weeks ago.
The real story is that Democrats are opting for a stunt to show their MoveOn.org base that the party is “confronting” Mr. Bush. In a microsession Tuesday, Virginia Democrat Jim Webb presided over an empty chamber for less than a minute, then left. Come to think of it, given their accomplishments so far, Democrats might as well have spent the entire fall doing the same thing.
But the Journal piece doesn’t go into great detail on why some of these appointments are stuck.
The hallmark of the Bush administration has not been sending appointments down to The Hill that enjoy widespread support via consensus, but rather to often name people to posts who tend to be highly partisan or controversial…and then take an attitude that the Executive Branch will decide.
The words “consensus” and “negotiation” often seem to have been redefined by this administration into other words (notably, “satisfy the party’s base” and “opposition submission”).
So the underlying controversies here are over many of the kinds of appointments Bush & Co chose to make and a seeming perception that a legislative branch not completely run by its own party is a pesky interference in executive branch governance, rather than a way the founding fathers set up the constitution to work.
Sam Stein, writes in The Huffington Post,;:
The recess appointment Reid and Democrats are most interested in avoiding is that of James W. Holsinger Jr., who was nominated by President Bush to be surgeon general. Holsinger has a long history of prejudice toward gays and lesbians.
President Bush has used recess appointments in the past to get controversial figures into key positions. John Bolton, for example, was appointed to the post of ambassador to the United Nations despite not receiving the support of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Sam Fox, a donor to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, meanwhile was made ambassador to Belgium during a congressional recess.
So there is indeed a history and a pattern. And it isn’t liberal, progressive or centrist propaganda to note that the Democrats are reacting to past Bush executive branch behavior which often mean using recess appointments to put its controversial appointees in anyway (even if in the end as recess appointments they showed they could do a good job).
This controversy is really about the twin notions of deferring to and nurturing the separation of powers and to the importance of consensus in creating a more united United States — rather than continually relying on power-plays and polarization to shove specific choices through.
Seen in that light, the Democrats’ action seems more of a political testosterone blocker. Bush’s recess appointments (and vetoes) have shown that he is still very much in the political game. And his recess appointments have often angered Democrats.
This isn’t to say that Bush is the only President who has made recess appointments. Other Presidents have made them — and Reid and Bush worked out a compromise for the August break.
And, with the compromise, there were no recess appointments then. But there was no compromise worked out for the Thanksgiving break.
So this time, without a compromise, it boiled down to whether the Democrats felt they could trust the White House to act in good faith during the recess.
And, based on the past, guess what the Democrats concluded?
A list of Bush’s recess appointments since taking office are HERE and HERE. More details HERE.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.