Excerpt
Hoping to unclog the Senate and spare scores of presidential appointees from what is often a grueling confirmation process, leading lawmakers in both parties are moving to cut the number of administration posts that are subject to Senate approval.
The proposal to end Senate review of about 200 executive branch positions would be the most serious effort in recent years to pare the chamber’s constitutional power of advice and consent. It amounts to a rare voluntary surrender of Congressional clout, and it has high-caliber, bipartisan support with the endorsement of the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, and the Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
“We are losing very good people because the process has become so onerous, so lengthy and so duplicative,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and a leading advocate of the bill. “Why should there be a full F.B.I background check back to age 18 for an individual serving on a part-time board?”
Ever since the Senate rejected President George Bush’s selection of John G. Tower as secretary of defense in 1989, Senate confirmations have become bruising public affairs that delve deep into a nominee’s background. President Obama’s initial picks for several cabinet posts withdrew their nominations after the process turned up embarrassing details.
Several presidents, frustrated by delays, have sought to bypass the process by making so-called recess appointments while Congress is not in session. Mr. Obama used that tactic last summer to install the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Backers of the confirmation measure say they want to ease what they call an arduous chore for midlevel nominees trying to navigate the Senate in a supercharged partisan era. While it would not affect senior positions, the legislation, and a related proposal to expedite filling about 250 part-time positions, is intended to reverse an explosion in confirmable posts from about 280 when President John F. Kennedy took office in 1961 to 1,400 today.
ABOUT TIME!
Then again, are politics-before-governance types going to actually give up this tool to bash an Administration in the hands of the "other" side?
I, for one, would like to see this happen.
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