TPM reports an "interesting nugget" from the continuing bailout saga: an unnamed Republican Senator is blocking the confirmation of Neil Barofsky, nominated by the White House to the newly created position of Special Inspector General at the Treasury Department.
Last week, Sen. Chris Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat who chairs the banking committee, issued a little-noticed statement saying that although the nomination "was cleared by members of the Senate Banking Committee, the leadership of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, and all Democratic Senators," it was "blocked on the floor by at least one Republican member." (itals ours.) [meaning theirs]
TPM further notes that, "Senate rules allow any senator to anonymously block a vote on confirmation to any federal post, for any reason."
That's close enough to correct that we don't have to make a big deal of it (though we do at Congress Matters). Here at Daily Kos, we can just direct you to prior explanations of the Senate hold, and then move on to the other issues, i.e., why would anyone block Barofsky, and what does it mean that his nomination is being blocked?
Nobody's really sure about the whys, just yet. As TPM notes:
The rationale for the move remains unclear. But a Washington Post story from a few days before Dodd's statement offers two suggestions. It notes that Barofsky supported Barack Obama, and describes an unresolved "battle between the Finance and Banking committees over which has jurisdiction over the confirmation process."
Whatever the motive, I feel compelled to remind people of what Max Baucus said during the Senate's debate on the bailout plan:
For the taxpayers' sake, I also wrote a provision creating a special watchdog to track and protect taxpayers' dollars. I have said that American resources must be used wisely and efficiently. This bill includes my proposal to create an independent Inspector General to oversee this effort. This effort and nothing else. Solely designed [sic] on this problem. I designed the office of this Inspector General to be truly independent, with the necessary resources to fight for every taxpayer dollar. I designed this Inspector General to be accountable only to the Congress and to the American taxpayer. It will be my personal ambition to make sure that this watchdog does his or her job. I want this Inspector General on the ground, in New York, inside the firms that facilitate Treasury auctions, watching every dollar that comes and goes. This investigator will hear from the Finance Committee as we work to protect the American people's interest in this effort.
Barofsky's been nominated to fill the job created by this provision about which Baucus was so insistent. Baucus's heart was in the right place, of course. A watchdog is precisely what was needed. But because the role of watchdog was being delegated by Congress (which could have been watching this for itself) to someone else whose nomination they'd have to approve at some later date (knowing adjournment was imminent, no less), the objection of a single Senator is capable of preventing any of it from happening, at least for the time being. And the $700 billion we were assured absolutely had to be allocated immediately but -- not to worry -- would be watched by an eagle-eyed Inspector General is instead floating out there, largely unused for the purposes originally stated, and with no one watching.
But the speech sounded great!
No one could have predicted...
One further note I feel compelled to add, going back to TPM's note that the WaPo article they cite, "describes an unresolved 'battle between the Finance and Banking committees over which has jurisdiction over the confirmation process.'"
Weren't we told during the Joe Lieberman fight that the threat he posed as Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee was minimal, in part because important legislation could be routed around his committee if necessary, as jurisdictional battles could be settled with a snap of the presiding officer's fingers?
So why hasn't someone snapped, already? I suspect that tale, like much of what we heard about Senate procedure during the Lieberman fight, was overly simplistic, and won't turn out to be quite as cut-and-dried as they tried to lead us to believe.