Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, first, I thank my colleague from Tennessee. He has been a great partner in this effort. In fact, I would say it was his impetus that brought us here. He had thought about this long and hard and worked on it previously. As usual, it has been a pleasure to work with Senator Alexander on the Rules Committee or anywhere else, and I thank him for spearheading this effort.

I also want to thank the two leaders, Senator Reid, of course, my friend--and I am so proud to work under his leadership--and Senator McConnell. I have to say this: Senator McConnell and I have our differences, but on all of these issues of moving the Senate forward he has been operating in good faith, and his support of this legislation has allowed us to get here.

Also, the committee chair, Senator Lieberman, as well as Ranking Member Collins, have been equal partners in this legislation, and it will go through their committee.

Finally, I thank all the committee chairs. They have been very understanding of the need to do this. Obviously, committee chairs might say: I want to have before my committee every single person, but ultimately they have realized it slows down the Senate.

While we are introducing the legislation today, a number of committee chairs on our side--probably with the consent of their ranking members--have come to me and said there might be other positions they want to add to the list. That would be a good idea. We have tried to be careful. We do not want to step on any toes or prerogatives. In the past, when this legislation was attempted, people said: Well, just, I don't want this one; I don't want that one. So we were fairly minimal. It will have a real effect on the Senate. It is close to one-third of the appointments. But there may be different committees that say: I don't need to approve this. In my committee, the committee on which I am the chair, the committee on which I am the ranking member, we do not need to approve these five or six more. Add them to your list.

We would hope our committee chairs would do that before the bill is considered because it will be considered by Senator Lieberman's committee, and there they could make such additions.

So let me say this about the process: One of the most important duties of the Senate is the constitutional advice-and-consent power. We were careful to balance this interest with the importance of making the confirmation process more efficient--not only for the benefit of the Senate but as well for the benefit of the administration, its agencies, and, as Senator Alexander so aptly pointed out, for those individuals who are nominated as well.

The Senate was designed to be a thoughtful and deliberative body, but the confirmation process has often become dangerously close to being gridlocked. The American public is harmed when we are not able to get qualified people confirmed to positions in a timely manner. All of the positions covered in this proposal tend to be noncontroversial and more closely resemble appointments that are currently made without Senate approval.

This legislation consists of a stand-alone bill, the Presidential Appointment Efficiency and Streamlining Act, and a resolution. Senator Alexander touched on the stand-alone bill, which will eliminate from Senate confirmation over 200 executive nomination positions and nearly 3,000 additional officer corps positions. The resolution will create a standing order that will streamline approval of almost 250 part-time board members.

We intend to move both of these pieces together in an effort to reform this process. Together, these two pieces will remove or streamline, as I mentioned, nearly one-third of currently confirmable Senate appointments.

The act will remove the need for confirmation for several categories of positions, including legislative and public affairs positions, chief financial officers, information technology administrators, internal management and administrative positions, and deputies or non-policy-related assistant secretaries who report to individuals who are Senate-confirmed. Removing these positions from Senate confirmation will allow a new administration to be set up with more efficiency and speed, thus making government work better for the people.

In addition, we have removed thousands of positions from the Public Health Service officers corps and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officer corps in the process. They are noncontroversial, and their removal will help prevent the possibility of further gridlock.

This act will also create a working group--because this is a work in progress, and Senator Alexander has been working on it longer than I have or most of us in this body--that will provide recommendations on the process to further streamline the appointment and confirmation process. The group will make recommendations to the President and the Senate about streamlining the paperwork process for nominees by creating a single, searchable, electronic "smart form" and will also conduct a review of the current background investigation requirements.

Senators LIEBERMAN and COLLINS held a hearing on the confirmations process last month in the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which will have jurisdiction over this piece of the package. The hearing was extremely helpful to our working group efforts and further highlighted the fact that our system of dealing with executive nominations needs reform.

The resolution piece of the package will create a streamlined process for part-time positions on boards or commissions. A majority of these boards require political balance--a certain number of Democrats and a certain number of Republicans. We are doing this rather than eliminating Senate consideration in its entirety in order to ensure that these politically balanced boards remain bipartisan. This was actually a recommendation, I believe, by Senator McConnell, and I think it is an apt one.

The resolution creates a standing order that will provide for an expedited process for this class of ``privileged nominations'' by creating new pages on the Executive Calendar. When the Senate receives a nomination from the President, it will be placed on a new section on the Executive Calendar called "Privileged Nomination--Information Requested" while the nominee submits paperwork to the committee of jurisdiction. When the chair of that committee certifies that all committee questionnaires have been received from the nominee, the nomination will be placed on the "Privileged Nomination--Information Received" section of the Executive Calendar.

As Senator Alexander mentioned, after 10 session days, the nomination is placed on the full Executive Calendar and will await action by the full Senate, with the presumption that these positions will be passed by unanimous consent. So any single Senator can object, although we doubt in almost every case that any will.

From the beginning of the process until the expiration of 10 session days, any Member can request on his or her own behalf or on behalf of any identified Member that the nomination be referred to committee. We think that incorporating this safeguard is in line with our elimination of secret holds earlier this year.

The presumption for these part-time positions is, as I said, that they will be approved by unanimous consent and not be held up as part of other battles or leverage or whatever else.

This resolution would come before the Rules Committee, which Senator Alexander and I lead, and we hope to take action on it very soon. We are confident this package will eliminate many of the delays in the current confirmation process. These delays are very detrimental to the efficient operation of government and to the efforts to recruit the most qualified people to these Federal jobs.

The package we propose today is the first step in protecting the American people's interests in having a newly elected President move quickly and efficiently to set up a government.

Before I yield the floor, I note that the Senator from New Mexico, Mr. Udall, in his impetus to reform the Senate, can claim some credit for this move as well.

We are introducing this bipartisan legislation--Senator Alexander and myself, along with Senators REID, MCCONNELL, COLLINS, LIEBERMAN, and I think about eight or nine other cosponsors as well--this afternoon.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source