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If you needed further proof that Sen. Dodd’s threat to hold a vote on financial reform was somewhat idle, other than the fact that Susan Collins emerged from a meeting with the Treasury Secretary today still opposed to the bill, consider what the Senate will spend their time on this week:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said today that he plans to stay in session “around the clock” until there are votes on five presidential nominees, including three for judicial vacancies, one for the Justice Department, and one for the Treasury Department. While senators aren’t yet breaking out the cots for late-night votes, the threat signals a renewed effort to push nominees to confirmation.
“Many Americans have never heard these nominations’ names before, but that doesn’t make their jobs any less critical for the country,” Reid said on the Senate floor. He singled out the judicial nominees, saying “the public pays the price” when they are not confirmed.
This will take an inordinate amount of time. Lael Brainard, the Treasury Department nominee, got cloture invoked on her nomination earlier this evening (by a vote of 84-10), and final confirmation is scheduled for noon tomorrow. So it took two days just to get one nominee done. There are five scheduled and that’s your week. Will financial reform, especially what appears to be a quixotic quest for it given Republican intransigence, really get shoehorned in there?
UPDATE: Jim Manley has confirmed, no vote this week. Dodd was bluffing.
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This is not a problem. This is the bipartisanship that the Corporatists and President Obama wants. Consider the choices, for change and hope, Geithner, Sunstein, Kagan and others just as bad.
If the R’s object, the President appeases them. Obama has not fought the R’s on any issue, especially health care. There was also Van Jones. Jones was not bipartisan. The President did not support him. He was a “librul”. Libruls are not allowed in the Bush/Obama Police state. So we need not care about what bipartisan shills he appoints. Let us have more bipartisanship to stop Obama’s corrupt choices.
You have to wonder whether the reception last night at the Boxer fundraiser will
make them realize that the calves are getting restless.
Using Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe to delay and drive FinReg to the right in the same
way as HCR last year is not going to fool anyone.
Once again, it’s all “Sound and Fury, signifying nothing.”
Dodd’s reform bill is a bluff.
Well, I bet it’ll fool the centrists at Daily Kos and TPM.
I’m not wildly enthused about Obama’s talk tough and then cave record either. But appointments, particularly judicial appointments, are important. If the R’s are going to filibuster everything, then time needs to be taken to overcome them. We need to fill these judicial vacancies before another Republican President gets a chance. Hopefully we can do that somewhat this week and then get on with financial reform. Of course, whether or not that “reform” is worth the paper it’s written on is a whole other thing we’ll have to look at.
It is probably good that the week will be used to get some more people appointed by obamarahma that will please the repugs. Then, there can be the financial corporation regulation reform that will please the repugs by having another corporate lobbyist be quickly hired (if one is not currently in the stable) to write this one to be as “nuanced” as the HCR is proclaimed to be.
David: famously, the Republicans have held or tried to obstruct the confirmation of a comparatively huge number of Obama appointees. Normally these appointees, which the NYT and others have identified as mundane, would have been confirmed a long time ago. This was the case, for example, in the Bush years. So demanding closure on the appointees is reasonable. The delay in this case, and the inordinate amount of time involved, can be blamed (for once) on the Republican obnoxiousness alone.
Wrong. Recess Appointments can be used, and should be, until R intransigence stops.
You can’t recess appoint someone to a lifetime federal judgeship. You can only recess appoint until the end of the next Congressional session. That doesn’t cut it if you want to inoculate the Courts against a complete right wing takeover.