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Hurry up, Pelosi
Democrats go slow on confirmations
By Joseph CurlTHE WASHINGTON TIMES
July 2, 2007
The new Democrat-controlled Senate has confirmed just 29 percent of President Bush's nominations so far this year, leaving many government agencies without key officials and slowing work to a crawl in some departments.
Since Jan. 7, the president has sent 229 major nominations to the Senate, but just 66 have been confirmed. Those figures exclude U.S. attorneys, marshals and judges, but the White House says those nominations also have an alarmingly low confirmation rate - just 18 of the 46 (39 percent) sent to the Senate this year have been approved.
The confirmation rate is far below that of the first six months of 1995, when the White House was occupied by a Democrat and Republicans had just taken over the House and Senate. Back then, President Clinton sent up 188 nominations between January and June, winning approval for 112 - a 60 percent confirmation rate.
While some of the pending nominations are lower-level employees at lesser-known agencies, dozens of important positions remain unfilled. Among them are the secretary of the Army; the Energy undersecretary for nuclear security; assistant secretaries of Defense, Homeland Security and Labor; and the Treasury undersecretary.
MESSAGE TO PELOSI & COMPANY: This is a deceitful and cowardly way to attempt exercising control beyond the Constitutional limits of your office. "Up or Down" please. There's a reason you SOB's in Congress have only a 14% approval rating, which if I am not mistaken, is even lower than that of President Bush.
On the other hand, "slowing work to a crawl" in government agencies can probably be counted as a blessing.