Hope and Fail

Then: Recess appointments are ‘damaged goods.’ Now: ‘In the interest of the American people’

President Obama announced he’s going to make 15 recess appointments while Congress heads home for Easter:

“The United States Senate has the responsibility to approve or disapprove of my nominees.  But if, in the interest of scoring political points, Republicans in the Senate refuse to exercise that responsibility, I must act in the interest of the American people and exercise my authority to fill these positions on an interim basis. Most of the men and women whose appointments I am announcing today were approved by Senate committees months ago, yet still await a vote of the Senate.  At a time of economic emergency, two top appointees to the Department of Treasury have been held up for nearly six months. I simply cannot allow partisan politics to stand in the way of the basic functioning of government.”

The Constitution allows recess appointments, and the Senate must confirm them by the end of the next Congress for the appointees to remain in their positions. Many presidents have used them, often to install their nominees when the Senate won’t act on them.

When President Bush appointed John Bolton as ambassador to the U.N. in 2005, Democrats in the Senate cried foul, including Barack Obama. From the Chicago Tribune:

Presidents occasionally use their recess-appointment authority to fill lower-level positions. But such an appointment to a prominent position generally stirs opposition from senators, who consider the tactic an encroachment on their constitutional power to confirm or reject high-level officials.

Republican Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio, who opposed Bolton’s confirmation, said, “I am truly concerned that a recess appointment will only add to John Bolton’s baggage and his lack of credibility with the United Nations.”

“To some degree, he’s damaged goods,” said Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “I think that means we’ll have less credibility and, ironically, be less equipped to reform the United Nations in the way that it needs to be reformed.”

So are Obama’s 15 appointees “damaged goods” who “have less credibility?”