For the first six years of his presidency, Bush followed a fairly predictable model when it came to appointments and key government posts. He would appoint an unqualified hack to run and/or oversee an important agency, congressional Republicans would approve said hack, and when the hack screwed up, a GOP-led Congress would balk at any oversight. The result, of course, was an ineffective and inefficient government bureaucracy that served no one (except, maybe, in the case of regulatory agencies, the Republican Party’s corporate benefactors).
It seemed like good news, then, when congressional Dems reclaimed the majority on the Hill, and told the White House that it was time to start picking capable, qualified officials for federal agencies. Not surprisingly, Bushies didn’t care for the idea, and refused to play along.
The result is an executive branch that’s even worse than before.
At the height of concern over product safety and lead-tainted toys, the Consumer Product Safety Commission doesn’t have enough members to meet. The nation is facing the prospect of a presidential contest with no referee, because the Federal Election Commission is too short-handed to call a quorum. With the economy in peril, the Council of Economic Advisers is plodding along with a lone member. The National Labor Relations Board, the body that adjudicates disputes between workers and bosses, has only two of its five commissioners still on the job.
An explosion at a sugar refinery in Georgia took nearly a dozen lives in February, but the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board is missing two of its five members — one of them the chairman.
The Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission’s two remaining members leave it one short of a quorum. Close to 200 nominees for federal appointments stand unconfirmed.
The federal government is running on fumes, and roadside signs suggest the next gas station won’t come until January 2009.
“It’s the worst last year of a two-term presidency since we created a two-term presidency,” said Paul Light, an expert on federal nominations at New York University.
Bush keeps sending unacceptable nominees; Congress keeps rejecting them; and the result is, in effect, a partial government shutdown.
The problem, aside from the obvious, is that the White House doesn’t much care.
It’s an unfortunate part of the negotiations with Congress. Democratic lawmakers want federal agencies that operate as they should. White House officials, fundamentally, don’t even want some of these federal agencies to exist, and certainly don’t believe in their missions. So, if Congress balks at an unqualified nominee, Bushies get to say, “Confirm, don’t confirm. We don’t really care either way.” Worse, they mean it.
Democrats charge that the federal commissions are not innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire between the White House and the Senate, but rather are targets of an administration happy to watch them die. “They could[n’t] care less,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, where many of Bush’s stalled nominations sit. “They dislike government. They dislike the way government works.”
Bush has a “blind indifference,” said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). “We didn’t have this during the Reagan period or Bush I. It’s unique and special now.” […]
Light said that Bush’s ambivalence toward government regulation plays a role in the stalemate. “If the Consumer Product Safety Commission is not able to promulgate rules, is that a bad thing for an anti-regulatory administration? Probably not,” he said. “If you’re in an anti-regulatory mood, having a regulatory commission unable to regulate is not necessarily a bad thing, especially if it’s going to regulate against industry.”
Paul Kiel added that Securities and Exchange Commission is “crippled,” and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is close to being unable to function at all.
This is your government at work.