New York Times Editorial: Call It Obstructionism

New York Times Editorial: Call It Obstructionism
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/opinion/28sun2.html?th=&adxnnl=1&emc=th&adxnnlx=1246194054-V2p/QjbPc6ZiL8c22LzuTg


In a burst of activity before adjourning on Friday for a two-week recess, the Senate confirmed 12 nominees for important positions in the Obama administration. That is the good news. Unfortunately, there are still 21 nominees for important posts awaiting confirmation.

Most of the stranded nominees have long since had hearings and majority approval by Senate committees and meetings with lawmakers. None of the nominees have been tainted by scandal or had their core competence questioned. And yet, they remain unconfirmed — one for more than three months and several others for more than a month — mainly because of holds, often anonymous and unexplained, by Republican senators.

Holds are effectively a filibuster, requiring 60 votes to overcome. Used legitimately, they can buy time to clear up unanswered questions about a nominee’s qualifications. But the current widespread holds of uncertain duration are obstructionism. Writing in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, Norman Ornstein, a Congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said the mass delays are “damaging the fabric of governance.”

Overcoming capricious delays is not easy. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, to his credit, has begun to do that. Last week, he gathered 62 votes, including five Republicans, to confirm Harold Koh as legal adviser to the State Department, after a delay of six weeks.

Mr. Reid — with President Obama’s help — should be similarly aggressive in nailing down Republican votes for other delayed nominations. Dawn Johnsen, an impressive nominee for assistant attorney general, has been on hold since mid-March. She has aroused Republican ire for her opposition to torture and her repudiation of extreme views of presidential power.

Robert Groves, the nominee for director of the Census Bureau, has been on hold since mid-May. He has been deemed suspect for his expertise in sampling, a statistical method for adjusting miscounts. Republicans charge that sampling could unfairly tilt the census results. That is highly debatable, but, more to the point, it is a nonissue. Mr. Groves testified at his confirmation hearing that sampling will not be used in the 2010 count. But the hold on Mr. Groves endures, enfeebling the Census Bureau in the critical final months before the count.

Good governance requires Republicans to drop groundless holds. The White House and Senate Democratic leaders need to keep fighting for these nominees.