Hope and Fail

Lying about the reason Berwick’s nomination was held up

As previously noted, President Obama’s choice to put Dr. Donald Berwick at the helm of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services through recess appointment shows a double standard on side-stepping the nomination process — making Berwick what Obama used to call “damaged goods.”

But what’s more, the White House is lying when it says Republicans “were going to stall the nomination as long as they could.”

In a post at the White House blog, the president’s communications director, Dan Pfeiffer, wrote:

Many Republicans in Congress have made it clear in recent weeks that they were going to stall the nomination as long as they could, solely to score political points.

But with the agency facing new responsibilities to protect seniors’ care under the Affordable Care Act, there’s no time to waste with Washington game-playing. That’s why tomorrow the President will use a recess appointment to put Dr. Berwick at the agency’s helm and provide strong leadership for the Medicare program without delay.

Quite the contrary, as ABC News’ Jake Tapper reports:

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., echoed the president’s suggestion, saying that “Republican lockstep stalling of Don’s nomination was a case study in cynicism and one awful example of how not to govern.”

But Republicans were not delaying or stalling Berwick’s nomination.

Indeed, they were eager for his hearing, hoping to assail Berwick’s past statements about health care rationing and his praise for the British health care system.

“The nomination hasn’t been held up by Republicans in Congress and to say otherwise is misleading,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, which would have held Berwick’s hearing.

Grassley said that he “requested that a hearing take place two weeks ago, before this recess.”

Berwick’s nomination was sent to the Senate in April, and his hearing had not been scheduled because he was participating in the “standard vetting process,” a Democratic aide on the Senate Finance Committee told ABC News.

But speaking not for attribution, Democratic officials say that neither Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., nor Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the chair of the Senate Finance Committee, were eager for an ugly confirmation fight four months before the midterm elections.

It’s worth noting that the president placed two other people in positions that are normally Senate-confirmable: Philip E. Coyle III as associate director for National Security and International Affairs and Joshua Gotbaum as director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.

Republicans did strongly object to Coyle, but it was Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, who blocked Gotbaum’s nomination.

But back to Berwick and “Washington game-playing.” It was the Republicans who wanted the hearings to proceed. The Democrats (and probably the White House) wanted to avoid the debate that would surround the president’s pick.

Tapper makes a couple of good points at the end of his post:

You can argue – and White House officials and Senate Democrats are, in fact, doing so – that Democrats were delaying Berwick’s hearing and the vote on his nomination because Republicans were going to play politics with it.

But a) that’s not the same as delaying or obstructing his nomination and b) some might argue that there’s also something to be said about combating policy arguments with better policy arguments.

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