Judicial activists and Washington’s diplomatic community are pressing Senate Democrats to confirm as many of President Obama’s pending nominations as possible during Congress’ lame-duck session.
Advocates who want those vacancies filled quickly say Senate leaders should use the final weeks of Democratic control before Republicans take over in January and have even less incentive to vote on Obama’s nominees.
Along with dozens of pending ambassadorial and at least two dozen judicial nominees, there are several important senior administration vacancies to fill.
Obama’s nominations that have remained stuck in the Senate for months include Dr. Vivek Murthy to be U.S. surgeon general and Nani Coloretti, his choice for deputy secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
In addition, Senate Democrats may want to push through the mid-October nomination of Google lawyer Michelle Lee to lead the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, ending a two-year tug-of-war for the agency’s leadership.
“There’s a lot of nominations to move, and there’s not enough time to move everybody” in the lame-duck session, one Democratic insider said. “All the nominees say the same thing — ‘Sen. Reid told me he’s going to bring me up’ — but not everyone is going to make it through.”
Democrats familiar with the process are watching to see whether Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., wants to begin the confirmation process for U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch, the president’s choice to replace Eric Holder as attorney general, before Republicans take over the chamber in January.
The full Senate confirmation process for the attorney general selection likely will take six to seven weeks, inevitably pushing part of that process and a final vote into next year. If Reid decides to begin the process by holding an initial hearing on Lynch’s pick, that could eat up precious time for pushing though other nominees during the lame-duck session.
“That’s the question right now so many of us are asking,” a source familiar with process told the Washington Examiner.
The National Rifle Association’s strong opposition to Murthy’s nomination for surgeon general, because of his vocal support for gun control measures, siphoned off key Democratic support early this year before the midterm elections.
At the time, the White House signaled it was recalibrating its approach to getting Murthy confirmed, postponing the vote until after the midterm elections and possibly considering appointing him during a congressional recess.
The Supreme Court’s rejection of Obama’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board makes another controversial recess appointment less likely, though.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is holding up Coloretti’s nomination while he investigates her current employer, the Treasury Department, for alleged violations of federal hiring laws. Coloretti serves as assistant secretary for management at Treasury.
Judicial activists would like to see 25 district court nominees — 16 of whom are already pending on the Senate floor and nine pending in committee — confirmed by the end of the year.
If the Senate fails to approve the slate of nominees, Obama will be forced to renominate them next year and they will have to go through the committee approval process again — this time with Republicans in control.
“It means all new paperwork … it’s a waste of time and a waste of taxpayer dollars,” Michelle Schwartz of Alliance for Justice told the Examiner. “A lot of these nominees have home-state and bipartisan support.”
Near the end of Obama’s first term, activists were angry that he wasn’t naming enough judicial nominees. Since then he has greatly picked up the pace, but the Senate has lagged in making time to approve them on a crowded legislative calendar.
Because of a special Senate agreement reached this year, Schwartz said district court nominees require only four hours of debate time evenly divided between the parties. Democrats can yield back their time, so the judicial nominations should only require two hours each, she said.
If the new Senate majority doesn’t extend the agreement, the nominations would revert to requiring 30 hours of debate time each, which could make confirmation a time-consuming process, Schwartz said.
Currently 47 ambassadorial nominees are awaiting confirmation for assignments, and eight more still need hearings in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Partisan feuding over unrelated issues have held up many of the nominations over the past two years, although Obama’s political selections for ambassadorial appointments also have played a role in the delays.
Presidents have long tapped well-heeled donors as U.S. representatives overseas. But Obama’s picks this year drew an unusual amount of fire after four — for Norway, Hungary, Argentina and Iceland — could not provide basic political facts about the countries where they would serve.
Just before leaving for August recess the Senate confirmed 10 ambassadors, including one for Sierra Leone, one of the countries where the Ebola outbreak began, as well as Turkey, a key ally in the region.
Many of the ambassadorial nominees could be moved in one vote as a group, but Republicans put a stop to such efforts earlier this year to protest Reid’s unilateral change of Senate rules requiring only 51 votes to avoid a filibuster.
The American Foreign Service Association, the union for career diplomats, keeps track of how many ambassadorial nominees are considered political allies of the president rather than qualified, career professionals.
Usually, presidents have tried to adhere to a 70-30 ratio, with 70 percent of nominees having career diplomat experience and 30 percent coming from a president’s campaign supporters.
According to AFSA, since taking office, Obama’s picks have been 64.8 percent career diplomats and 35.2 percent political allies.
In his second term, his choices have skewed more heavily political: 58.6 percent are experts in their field while 41.4 percent are political allies of Obama.
In mid-September, AFSA sent a letter to Senate leaders expressing its deep concern about the nominee backlog and urging the Senate to confirm all ambassadorial nominees before the Nov. 4 midterm elections.
“Failure to do so will damage America’s reputation and weaken our national security interests and our ability to advance America’s economic interests,” AFSA wrote.
