Senate politics shut down some federal agencies

WASHINGTON -- When Senate Republicans filibustered President Obama's nominee to a key consumer watchdog post this month, it was the first time in history the Senate blocked an appointment in an effort to effectively shut down an agency.

It likely won't be the last. Already, Senate Republicans are threatening to hold up Obama's nominees to a number of posts overseeing elections, labor law and health care — and in each case, they aim to kill the agency outright.

Senate Republicans say refusing to confirm a nominee is the only recourse they have left after Democrats pushed through legislation without listening to GOP concerns about transparency and accountability.

Part of the problem is that Democrats have "created so many new agencies without Republican input," said Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. "There's a whole bunch of new nominees or confirmable spots to have a debate over."

In blocking the president's nomination of Richard Cordray to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Dec. 8, McConnell said, "We are not going to let the president put another unelected czar in place."

By law, only the bureau's director can exercise the new powers granted under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act last year. Without one, the bureau can't regulate payday lenders, debt collectors and credit-reporting agencies, for example.

Confirmation battles in the Senate are nothing new, but the reasoning is. Never before had the Senate explicitly blocked a nominee to shut down an agency's business, says Don Ritchie, the Senate's official historian.

Rejection is disturbing trend

The Senate has rejected nominees for all kinds of reasons, he says. "But we haven't found any precedent for making an agency powerless by not confirming anyone to run it."

"Nonsense," counters Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala. Both parties have routinely held up nominations for exactly that reason, he says. "The only thing different in this particular case is that it is completely transparent. … We are right here in the open."

Still, one scholar calls it a new and disturbing trend.

"If your view is that an agency shouldn't exist, and so you're going to use your one vote against a nominee, that's fine. But using the filibuster to raise the bar to 60 (votes), not because they're awful people, but because you're trying to delegitimize an agency, that's very far over the line," says Norm Ornstein of the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute.

The Senate hasn't filibustered Obama's nominees to the Election Assistance Commission, but they are stuck in committee — with the same effect. The four-member commission has been two members short for a year now — leaving it short of the three members required by law to conduct business. The remaining two members are leaving this month.

Also, the executive director has left, and the general counsel is acting in his place. He, in turn, has been nominated to another federal post. If he leaves, there will be no one running the agency day-to-day.

Vacancies just languish

It's a "slow death," says Gracia Hillman, a former Democratic commissioner. "One by one by one the vacancies have been languishing and languishing and languishing," she says. Republicans have "attacked that agency every way they could."