Legislative Limbo Strands Many of Obama’s Nominees

[babylonsister]

Legislative Limbo Strands Many of Obama’s Nominees

By HELENE COOPER
Published: December 27, 2009


WASHINGTON — Almost every day, the news releases go up on the White House Web site and go out to reporters: “President Obama announces more key administration posts,” they read.

Trouble is, many of those administration posts are being held up in the Senate in a political do-si-do that is traditional on Capitol Hill but seems to have become more tangled than ever in partisanship.

Of the 200 or so Obama nominations pending, some 75 have gotten through committee but were being held up for various reasons in the Senate, administration officials and Congressional staff members said. During their last gasps of official business after the health care vote on Thursday morning, senators cleared 35 nominees by unanimous consent — far short of the 60 that administration officials had been hoping to get through by the end of the year.

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Most of the time when a hold is put on a nominee, it is either because there is a strong ideological objection, or because a senator is trying to extract some sort of commitment from either the nominee or the administration — as was the case with both Ms. Sapiro and Ms. Johnson.

But sometimes there is no overt explanation. On March 24, Mr. Obama nominated Marisa J. Demeo, a magistrate judge in Washington who is openly gay, for a seat on the Superior Court in the District of Columbia. The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the nomination on May 20.

But Judge Demeo’s nomination has yet to come to the floor of the Senate, and no one has stepped forward to say why. Other gay nominees have been approved, including John Berry, who is now head of the Office of Personnel Management.

In all, around 500 senior positions in the executive branch need Senate approval, along with a number of vacant judicial seats and other positions for which the president sends nominations to the Senate.

So far, 463 of Mr. Obama’s nominations have been confirmed by the Senate, and 226 are pending.

Administration officials have shied away from publicly criticizing the slow pace of confirmations, for fear of angering the same senators who they are hoping will remove their holds. “We’ve made great progress in confirming nearly 500 of the president’s nominees this year,” a White House official said Thursday. “We will continue to work with the Senate next year to move forward the more than 200 people whose nominations are pending.”

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/28/us/politics/28nominees.html?_r=1

[NJmaverick]

1. There has got to be a better way