Another day, another atrocity:
President Bush named Republican fundraiser Sam Fox as U.S. ambassador to Belgium on Wednesday, using a maneuver that allowed him to bypass Congress where Democrats had derailed Fox's nomination.
And the hits just keep on coming:
Bush also used his recess appointment authority to make Andrew Biggs deputy director of Social Security. The president's earlier nomination of Biggs, an outspoken advocate of partially privatizing the government's retirement program, was rejected by Senate Democrats in February.
And according to K-Lo at NRO, there are even more:
Susan E. Dudley, of Virginia, to be Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget
Sam Fox, of Missouri, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to Belgium
Carol Waller Pope, of the District of Columbia, to be a Member of the Federal Labor Relations Authority
Google-bugs, start your engines...
Update: Who are these people that cant pass Senate muster? Lets start with Andrew Biggs
Andrew Biggs is a former Social Security analyst and Assistant Director of the Cato Institute's Project on Social Security Choice. Prior to joining Cato he was Director of Research at the Congressional Institute in Washington, D.C. (where he remains a Fellow), and a staff member for the House Banking and Financial Services Committee. He holds a Bachelor's degree from the Queen's University of Belfast, Master's from Cambridge University and Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
In 2001 Biggs served as a staff member for the President’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security, and in 2002 he was appointed by the Bush administration as a delegate to the National Summit on Retirement Savings and addressed the United Nations International Conference on Financing for Development. He has been published or quoted in the New York Times, Washington Post, Washington Times, Los Angeles Times, Investors Business Daily, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, CNN, CNNfn, Fox News Channel, Bloomberg Television, National Review and others. Given dozens of speeches, radio and television interviews.
He seems to have a significant body of work and apparently is a strong advocate of destroying Social Security so called private accounts (I thought we already had those - they're called IRAs).
Update Susan E. Dudley, of Virginia, to be Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget. Evidently she is a "Free market environmentalist" (whatever that means). Al Kamen in the WaPo quotes a clean air advocate as saying that she is "a true anti-regulatory zealot" who "makes John Graham (the previous office holder) look like Ralph Nader."
updateHow long does Congress have to be in recess before the President can make a recess appointment? The Washington Note says:
According to a quite handy Congressional Research Service document by Henry Hogue on recess appointments, no such appointment has been made in the last 20 years during a Congressional recess period of less than ten days.
This excerpt is quite interesting:
How Long Must the Senate Be in Recess Before a President May Make a Recess Appointment?
The Constitution does not specify the length of time that the Senate must be in recess before the President may make a recess appointment. Over the last century, as shorter recesses have become more commonplace, Attorneys General and Offices of Legal Counsel have offered differing views on this issue. Most recently, in 1993, a Department of Justice brief implied that the President may make a recess appointment during a recess of more than three days.Appointments made during short recesses (less than 30 days), however, have sometimes aroused controversy, and they may involve a political cost for the President. Controversy has been particularly acute in instances where Senators perceive that the President is using the recess appointment process to circumvent the confirmation process for a nominee who is opposed in the Senate. Although President Theodore Roosevelt once made recess appointments during an intersession recess of less than one day, the shortest length of a recess during which appointments have been made during the past 20 years was 10 days.
The Senate is in recess from 02-09 Apr. Naughty, naughty.
<update>Opinionated Ed alludes to a good point in the other diary on this topic. The smart move would be for Fredo to resign/get fired (on Easter when no one is paying attention?) and appoint his successor during recess. Harry Reid better rally the troops now to head this off at the pass!
Update HiBob offers some informed speculation on recess appointments at EPA. Perhaps a few more shoes are left to drop?
Update From Public Citizen's press release on Dudley:
As director of regulatory studies at the industry-funded Mercatus Center, Dudley has argued that:
the lives of seniors should count for less than the lives of the young when agencies are weighing the costs and benefits of proposed rules;
smog is good for you, and instead of requiring the government to reduce ozone levels, poor, asthmatic children should stay indoors on peak ozone days;
agencies should not provide us life-saving improvements in air bag designs because if the public really wanted them, the market would already be providing them; and
a Clinton administration rule to increase our protection from arsenic in drinking water was "an unwelcome distraction."
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