Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions
Floor Speech
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Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, the Senator from New York and I are on the Senate floor today to introduce legislation that will help make the Senate a more effective place to deal with the big issues facing our country, such as the debt, our national defense, and other issues.
This is the result of discussions we have had over the last several months with many Members of the Senate on both sides of the aisle. It began with some reforms in Senate rules, which included eliminating the so-called secret hold and doing other steps. It is the culmination of work by a number of Senators on both sides of the aisle--including Senator Lieberman; Senator Collins; the leaders, Senator Reid and Senator McConnell, when they were whips; Senator Schumer and I; and others. We had bipartisan breakfasts on these reforms a couple years ago, and it came down to the questions: How many confirmations should the Senate have? How many confirmations are enough confirmations? Is it in the public interest to allow a new President, whether Democratic or Republican, to staff the government promptly? And is it in the public interest to get rid of this syndrome that is established in Washington, which I call ``innocent until nominated,'' where we invite a distinguished person to come in and run that person through a gauntlet that makes him or her out to be a criminal for making some mistake in the process of being confirmed?
We have worked together, and we have come up with legislation that Senator Schumer is introducing on behalf of both of us--on behalf of the leaders, Senator Reid and Senator McConnell, and on behalf of Senator Lieberman and Senator Collins.
This legislation would answer the question, how many confirmations are enough confirmations, by reducing or streamlining the nomination process for about 450 nominees--out of a total of about 1,400 nominations. Over 1,000 Senate confirmed nominations will remain unchanged. Just to put that into perspective, that is still more confirmations than existed when President Clinton was President of the United States. It is almost four times as many confirmations as existed when President Kennedy was President of the United States. In other words, like many things in government, the number of confirmations has grown over time.
We have ended up confirming people we have no business confirming--people who are public relations officers, people who are financial information people--and we have made it difficult for the government to be staffed.
Is it in our interest, and the citizens', to staff the government promptly? Yes, I think it is. We have created this phenomenon where Administrations are slow to get staffed up. For example, when President Obama came in, Secretary Geithner, the Treasury Secretary, was sitting over at Treasury almost home alone during the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression. According to news accounts, he did not have much help. The key vacant positions in Treasury were Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Analysis, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax, Trade, and Tariff Policy, and a variety of others. That situation was not helping any of us. Whether we agreed with President Obama or Secretary Geithner or not, after an election a President should be able to promptly staff the government, and we in the Senate should have procedures to give us a chance to review those nominees and offer our advice and consent and confirm or reject those nominees in a reasonable period of time.
If we are spending our time dealing with junior officials or PR officers, we are spending less time dealing with the Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy, on whom we should be focusing a lot of time, and to whom we should be asking a lot of questions.
Then, there is this business of what I call ``innocent until nominated''--all of us know this exists. It really exists by sloppiness on our part, both in the legislative branch and the executive branch. If you are asked to serve in the Federal Government--and I know this because I was asked by the first President Bush--you fill out forms. Well, there are many forms. There are many forms in the executive branch. They have different definitions; for example, the definition of ``income.'' If you were to carelessly fill out the same definition of ``income'' on one form as another form, you might have been incorrect on one of the forms, and then someone might say you were telling a lie and were not fit to serve. That has been called by others, including me, as being ``innocent until nominated.''
I remember when Ron Kirk, the former mayor of Dallas, was nominated by President Obama to be the Trade Representative. There was some issue about whether he had properly reported a speech fee he gave to charity. What difference did it make in terms of his overall fitness to serve? It held him up. It embarrassed him. It was not relevant to the inquiry.
So the legislation we have will do the following: It proposes eliminating the need for Senate confirmation or streamlining over 450 positions. About 200 of these nominations will be eliminated as Senate confirmations. These are the ones the Senate does not need to spend time on. The other half will come directly to the desk. Then, unless an individual Senator says: Send it on to committee to go through the regular order, it will be expedited. That still leaves us with 1,000 Senate confirmations that we can have--1,000 hostages we can take. That is more hostages than we could take under Bill Clinton. That is almost four times as many hostages than the Senate could take under President Kennedy. That ought to be plenty of hostages for any Senator to make his or her point if that is what we seek to do.
Second, the legislation would set up a process whereby an executive branch working group would review the various forms that nominees are expected to fill out, and try to have a single smart form in the executive branch. The working group will consult with committees of Congress. It might make sense to see if we can do the same thing with our forms, and make it possible that we can get all the information we want without unnecessarily subjecting nominees to harassment or trickery just because they are not wise enough to fill out different forms with different definitions.
I think this is a substantial step forward. It may not sound like much to those watching the Senate, but let me just say that both of our leaders, REID and MCCONNELL, have said they tried this and could not get it done. Senator Lieberman and Senator Collins have tried, and they could not get it done. I worked with Senator Lieberman 2 years ago and we could not get it done.
What has happened this time is a result of the discussion we had earlier in the year about making the Senate a more effective place to work--with the full support of the leaders, REID and MCCONNELL; with the full support of Senator Lieberman and Senator Collins; and with the good work of Senator Schumer. We have come up with a consensus piece of legislation which has broad bipartisan support from both sides of the aisle, including chairmen and ranking members of the committees you would think might be the first ones to object. This legislation would still leave the Senate with the prerogatives it ought to have in terms of reviewing Presidential nominees and separates out those who take our time away from the more important things we ought to be doing.
I thank the Senator from New York for the way he has worked on this issue. He has been constructive and direct and helpful. I thank the leaders for their support. I hope the committees will rapidly consider the legislation Senator Schumer is introducing on our behalf, and I hope it will show we can take another small step in making the Senate a more effective place to work.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a document entitled ``List of Presidential Appointments No Longer Requiring Senate Confirmation''--there are about 200 of those--and a document entitled ``Privileged Nominations.'' Those are the ones that will be expedited, unless a single Senator decides he or she wants to have this nominee sent to committee, and that is about another 240.
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