Remember the spoils system from AP US History? Well, the President doesn’t exactly get to hand out cushy cabinet posts to his best pals anymore.
These days, in a gridlocked U.S. Congress that has struggled to agree on important legislative efforts, the previously routine confirmation of Presidential cabinet nominees has become the scene of partisan jujitsu. As Obama has attempted to fill the vacancies in his new cabinet in the first months of his second term, his choices have met fierce opposition from Congressional Republicans.
The most memorable example of this was Rand Paul’s determined effort to filibuster the nomination of now CIA director John Brennan. Unfortunately, 13 hours-worth of musing on the fact that using drones to attack U.S citizens would be bad could not stop Brennan from being confirmed. It can be expected that a high profile position such as CIA director would face a certain amount of political scrutiny. However in the last month Obama’s nominees for posts that generally don’t draw a lot of partisan attention have been held up.
The President’s nominee for Secretary of Labor, Thomas Perez, has faced particularly stringent opposition. On May 16th members of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions voted 12-10 to clear his nomination, all 10 Republicans voted against him. Perez, currently the Justice Department’s top civil rights lawyer, has faced criticism from Republicans for a deal he reached with the Minnesota state justice department. Perez agreed to not pursue a lawsuit involving whistleblowers in return for St. Paul officials’ promise to drop a potential Supreme Court case. Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell described Perez to Bloomberg News as a “crusading ideologue,” accusing Perez of manipulating the law to support his own agenda as the Supreme Court case in question had the potential to strike down a crucial enforcement tool used by the Justice Department in housing discrimination cases.
Also on May 16th, Gina McCarthy, Obama’s nominee to run the EPA, was approved the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on of vote of 10-8. All 8 Republicans voted against her. Opposition to McCarthy has been based not on her own capacity to do the job but rather on Republicans’ criticisms of the EPA itself. Republican Senator David Vitter, the leading Republican on the committee, voiced opposition because the EPA had refused to answer his questions about their enforcement of clean air legislation. In Vitter’s defense, McCarthy was previously the assistant administrator for air pollution. However, other objections to McCarthy have been less well founded. Republican members submitted almost 1,100 questions for McCarthy to answer and then accused her of a lack of transparency when she failed to adequately answer all of them.
Though both Perez and McCarthy have gotten out of their respective committees, they still face likely Republican filibusters when they appear before the full Senate. Senate Democrats have become so frustrated by the Republican roadblocks that some have called for a change in Senate rules which require 60 votes to avoid filibuster. At the moment Senate Democrats only have 55 votes, give or take, allowing a united Republican minority to filibuster anything they want. In response, Senate majority leader Harry Reid has been considering a rule change to limit filibusters on Presidential nominees. Changing the rules usually requires 67 votes, but an obscure technicality could allow Democrats to change the rule with only a simple majority. However, this step, ominously referred to as the ‘nuclear option,’ has drawn skepticism from other Democrats who worry about the precedent it would set. Senator Carl Levin, a Democratic from Michigan, responded to the New York Times’ request for comment on the proposed rule change by asking, “you think you’ve got gridlock now?”
A very appropriate response to all this information would be: so what? We all know Congress is dysfunctional. The news that cabinet members aren’t getting confirmed shouldn’t be too surprising, and no reforms for Federal government officials to enforce are making it through Congress anyway. The problem is that as nominees muddle through a lengthy confirmation process, the agencies they are supposed to be running are left in the lurch. Currently, a quarter of the State Department’s senior posts are vacant, leaving Secretary of State John Kerry to act as his own assistant secretary for the Near East. Lacking leadership, the department’s acting deputies have little authority to make decisions which threatens the department’s ability continue functioning. As the potential leaders of the Department of Labor and the EPA wait to be confirmed, their departments will likely face similar challenges.