One of the most annoying thing the Republican minority in the Senate has done is to prevent confirmation of qualified Obama appointees. As near as I can tell Obama has been slow to nominate for many positions as he's going through an extensive vetting process and trying to find uncontroversial people. That doesn't matter, lately Republicans are blocking just about everyone. Peter Diamond for the Fed was perhaps the most egregious.
Last Thursday, "Forty-five Republican senators voted to block a confirmation vote for Richard Cordray, President Barack Obama's nominee to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau." It's not that they didn't like him or think him qualified, they didn't like the new CFPB even though it was passed by Congress and signed into law by the President. "Republicans said that until the Obama administration agrees to changes at the agency, they will keep blocking the president’s pick from taking charge."
Dr. Don Berwick was a recess appointment as head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Steven Benen wrote about Berwick’s brilliant tenure cut short. "Republicans crushed Berwick’s chances without a credible reason, and it limited his CMS tenure to a year and a half. But these were a very productive 17 months, during which Berwick did some incredibly important and worthwhile work. He should have been confirmed and encouraged to serve indefinitely, but if 17 months of Berwick is the best we can do due to Republican recklessness, it’s much better than nothing." Berwick wasn't happy about what happened to him.
Obama's choice as Berwick's replacement is Marilyn Tavenner. She's been Principal Deputy Administrator of CMS since Feb 2010, a few months before Berwick got there, though apparently they have similar views. You'd think that Republicans would be opposed to her too, but "House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was resolute in his support for" her. They've known each other for 15 years. We'll see how good his relationship with the Senate is.
Mari Carmen Aponte was a recess appointment in 2010 to serve as the U.S. ambassador to El Salvador. Steven Benen explains that "GOP senators are balking, however, because they don’t like her ex-boyfriend from 20 years ago."
Caitlin J. Halligan was a nominee to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit which has three of eleven seats vacant. Her appointment was filibustered on party-line votes, except for Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). Linda Greenhouse explains that this isn't unusual now.
"Across the federal judiciary, confirmation has been proceeding at a slow crawl. This week, the Judiciary Committee held a scheduled confirmation hearing that could have accommodated five nominees. But because Republican senators claimed not to be finished reading the F.B.I. files of four of the nominees, only one, Paul J. Watford, nominated for the Ninth Circuit, was able to appear for his hearing. Nominees who clear the committee without opposition have to wait months for a floor vote because the Republicans won’t agree to a speedier schedule. Of 21 nominees now awaiting floor votes, 18 had no committee opposition, but only a handful, at most, will get a vote before the Senate recesses for the year."
Each year, in his report, Chief Justice John Roberts begs the President and Senate to appoint federal judges as there have been too many vacant seats for too long. Of the 179 seats in the 13 circuit Court of Appeals there are 14 vacancies. 86 seated judges were appointed by Republicans and 79 by Democrats. Wikipedia has some good tables. The separate D.C. Circuit has 3 vacancies and is otherwise 5-3 Republican-Democrat appointees.
I don't know the stats for the 678 authorized district judges (in 94 districts) but here's a fun fact from 2008, "All along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, courts are clogged with immigration-related cases. As a result, the region's courtrooms handle a disproportionate amount of the country's crime. Just five of the country's 94 districts -- South California, New Mexico, Arizona, West Texas and South Texas -- handle 75 percent of all the criminal cases in federal district courts around the country."
Sure the minority party can complain and can block some appointments. Republicans are mad at Democrats for blocking two of Bush's judicial appointments and threatening to filibuster. They cried foul since that hadn't be done before and we had the whole nuclear option debate until the gang of whatever agreed to end it. Bush got most of his nominees through, just a few of the more ideological ones did Democrats oppose. Now Republicans are blocking most appointments and I think for the second time, Congress Won't Recess To Block Obama Appointments. "Ever since late May, Congress has remained in permanent session, mainly because Republican lawmakers want to prevent any more recess appointments."
I like this approach, "Betty Koed, an associate Senate historian, says that in 1903, Teddy Roosevelt used an almost nonexistent congressional break to make recess appointments. "When the presiding officer brought the gavel down to end one session, he simultaneously began the next session," Koed says, "And in that split second it took the gavel to go down, Roosevelt appointed 193 people." Catholic University law professor Victor Williams says President Obama should show similar audacity. "He should not ignore the pro-forma sessions," Williams says. "He should explicitly, deliberately challenge them." If he doesn't, Williams says, a pattern of pro-forma sessions shutting off recess appointments that began late in the Clinton administration will only continue, leaving key posts in the administration vacant."
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