Last night, Patricia Smith, President Obama’s choice to be Solicitor of the Department of Labor, passed an important procedural hurdle: the Senate decided to vote on her nomination.

What’s remarkable is that, unlike past attempts to block votes on executive branch nominees, the vote was entirely along party lines.  Even the so-called moderates in the Republican party, like Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, voted against allowing an up or down vote on a second-tier executive branch nomination.

For a party that railed against the use of the filibuster even in the case of judicial nominees, the hypocrisy is remarkable.

Perhaps, you think, Patricia Smith is far outside the mainstream, and the GOP was using it’s last tactic to stop an extreme nominee. 

Nope.  

But filibustering a nominee like Smith for a position most people have never heard of in a department that is rarely in the news still requires some justification. After all, most of the GOP senators have been around long enough that they served during a time when such a filibuster would be unimaginable.

So they called Smith a liar.

Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wy.), the ranking Republican on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, led the pack, decrying her "lack of candor" and cited "discrepancies in her testimony." The issue -- which was really not, of course, the issue -- centered on a small pilot program in New York called Wage Watch, which aims to educate workers about the minimum wage is and when they are entitled to overtime. Republicans, during committee hearings, insisted that it was a Big Labor plot, but Smith said the idea had been generated within her office. It was later shown that apparently a labor representative had suggested it to an employee, who then suggested it to Smith.

The GOP also lambasted Smith for categorizing the pilot program as "educational" rather than "enforcement." Democrats pointed out that the distinction was an irrelevant one: The purpose of the education was to improve enforcement efforts.

The pilot program cost $6,000. Smith manages some 4,000 employees and oversees an $11 billion annual budget.

The conclusion is obvious.  The GOP, including so-called moderates, are obstructing nominations for the sake of obstruction, throwing sand into the gears of government and attempting to hobble the Obama administration by any means necessary.  That tactic is irresponsible and unacceptable.  Americans deserve better.

If anyone had any doubt that the courts matter, check out this article in today’s Hill about Republicans and allied groups vowing to spend millions on legal challenges to healthcare reform and other parts of the Obama agenda.

Health care, global warming, financial reform, workers rights--you name it.  The courts make a huge difference in the lives of all Americans. Who sits on those courts--and how fully they embrace our core constitutional values--is critical.

That’s why there’s so much urgency about breaking the current nominations impasse created by Republicans’ unprecedented obstruction. And that’s why we need a bold choice to fill any new vacancy on the Court--someone who understands the constitution mandates attention to the interests of all, not just a privileged few.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy lashed out today at the unprecedented obstruction of judicial and executive branch nominees by the Republican majority. There are currently 12 judicial and 15 executive branch nominees on the Senate Calendar that the Republicans are stalling. Some, like Dawn Johnsen, as Senator Leahy notes, have been awaiting action for more than nine months. The last judicial nominee, whom Republicans delayed for six weeks, was confirmed unanimously by a vote of 97 to zero. Since that vote on December 1st, not a single judicial nominee has been considered by the full Senate. There are now more judicial nominees pending on the Senate calendar than have been confirmed all year.

The Republican agenda of delay and obstruction is clear. The price to the American people is also clear. With the range of critical issues before this Administration, the President needs his team at the Justice Department in place. And, with the 97 current and 23 announced judicial vacancies reaching record proportions, the threats to the administration of justice are serious. As Senator Leahy said, “Justice should not be delayed or denied to any American because of overburdened courts and the lack of Federal judges.”

You can read Senator Leahy’s full statement here. And click here to read PFAW’s recent report on the obstruction of executive branch nominees.
 

Check out this classic piece by Rachel Maddow, illustrating how far the Republicans are willing to go as the Party of No.

As weeks go, I think this has been a fascinating look at the Republican obstruction machine – and how willing they are to play politics with our future.

First, the Republicans fumed and fumed about the omnibus appropriations bill, as President Obama explained, last year’s undone business that had to be taken care of to move on to the urgent problems facing us. They held it up over the weekend, forced votes on a whole bunch of amendments this week that they knew wouldn’t pass just so they could try to play “gotcha” with the Democrats and then passed the bill on a voice vote. So much for principled opposition! 

Then they fumed and fumed about how horrid David Ogden was – this is President Obama’s and Attorney General Holder’s eminently qualified choice to be the second in line at the Justice Department.  They wrung their hands about “hard left radicals” who have endorsed Ogden, such as the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the Fraternal Order of Police, and the National District Attorneys Association.  The Republicans slow-walked the nomination through Committee and then threatened a filibuster in the full Senate, but couldn’t muster the votes.  The right-wing Family Research Council said they’d “score” the vote in an effort to hold senators accountable for the dastardly act of voting for Ogden and then today he was voted on by the full Senate and received a resounding 65-28 vote! Clearly the final result was not in doubt.

So what were these histrionics about?  And how long can they justify playing politics with America's future?

I just came back from an executive meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee where once again the Republicans are demonstrating a reflexive and not very wise strategy of just saying NO. Senator Leahy, chair of the Committee was trying to move the nominations of two key Justice Department nominees, Elena Kagan, who will be the first woman to be confirmed as the Solicitor General of the United States, and Tom Perrelli, who will be the third-most senior official at the Justice Department, but Republicans on the committee refused to permit a vote. 

It’s not that they’re not entitled to do this – they have the procedural right under the Committee’s rules to hold the votes over until the next meeting of the Committee. My concern is that the Republicans didn’t appear to have any good reasons for delaying the votes other than “because we can.” That shouldn’t be acceptable, particularly where, as here, the delay denies Attorney General Holder and President Obama the senior leadership team they need to address the enormous task of restoring public confidence in the Department’s commitment to the rule of law.

Senator Leahy has bent over backwards to accommodate the Committee Republicans, in much the same way that President Obama has tried to reach across the aisle on a range of issues. But the response is obstructionism and delay. Saying NO just because you can is not sound policy and is not good for the American people.