Washington Examiner
The Senate is expected to vote Wednesday on the Presidential Appointment Efficiency and Streamlining Act (S. 679). This terrible bill will likely pass then stall in the U.S. House and die. But before you breathe a sigh of relief consider first the danger posed by a Senate that seems hell-bent on sacrificing its own constitutional powers and outsourcing them to an increasingly powerful executive branch.
Do not be fooled by the fact that this measure has bipartisan support. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell R-Ky. and six other Republican senators are only backing it as part of the deal they cut with the Democratic majority last year to preserve the Senate filibuster. The merits of that trade-off are perhaps debatable but there is no debate about the ill-advised nature of this bill.
The bills chief aim is to eliminate Senate confirmation for more than 200 of the roughly 1400 presidential appointments that fall under the Article II Section II Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution. This is a faulty solution to a real problem. It does take far too long for presidents of either party to get their appointments through the constitutionally required Senate confirmation process -- some Obama appointees waited a full year.
But the solution is not to eliminate the need for approval. Instead of ceding congressional authority over the ever-expanding federal bureaucracy Congress should be reining in that bureaucracy. At the very least it should stop passing laws -- like Obamacare and the Frank-Dodd financial reform act -- that expand the bureaucracy to the point where there are too many positions for the Senate to confirm.
The bill also contains a self-refuting mockery referred to as the Working Group on Streamlining Paperwork for Executive Nominations. Its sole responsibility is to create more paperwork. It would create two new reports on how the federal government could streamline the nomination process. But President Obama can order such a review anytime he wants. For Congress to require more paperwork on how to reduce paperwork is a waste of time and money.
The Framers of the Constitution included the Advise and Consent clause of the Constitution as a valuable check on executive branch power. It should not be discarded lightly especially at a time when the executive branch is claiming unprecedented authority to wage war and reverse decades of established labor law without congressional approval. The Senate should not reduce its own role in the name of efficiency. If the cost of a aquickly-staffed administration is an even more powerful presidency then we suggest that senators decline the offer.
