Senate confirmation for presidential appointees eliminated

So yesterday evening, Congress decided to abrogate its power of confirmation to the presidency. And this passes for bipartisanship. Disgusting. When you read this piece, pay attention to the sugar-coated language of bipartisanship...

WaPo: The House Tuesday evening passed a measure to improve the clogged presidential appointee confirmation process by eliminating 169 jobs from requiring Senate approval.

The Senate has already changed its rules to place another 270 or so nominees in a “streamlined” category where, if no senator objects, the nominee would bypass laborious committee hearings and go directly to the Senate floor for a vote.

Both Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Republican leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) backed the measure, the product of an active bipartisan effort from Senate Rules Committee Chairman Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and top committee Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.). It passed last July on a 79-20 vote.

The House, which of course has no role in the confirmation process, had been expected to promptly follow suit. Then President Obama’s recess appointments in January infuriated Republicans and may have soured the mood for passing the bill.

But perhaps the tight polls and a possible Romney presidency in January — in addition to doing something about the mess known as the confirmation process — apparently proved enough Tuesday to overcome any misgivings.

So, basically, if you wait long enough, the Republican establishment will roll over...particularly when they think they might have a chance at replacing Democrat Big Government with Republican Big Government!

“The legislation is going to benefit whoever is our next president,” said Max Stier, president and CEO of the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, which helped lead the effort to reform the broken confirmation process.

Nonpartisan...right. Never mind that this bipartisanship just allowed Congress to shrug off its own job and in essence hand over the keys to the current king! Now Obama is essentially free to appoint whomever he chooses, however radical. You don't grant this kind of power to a power-hungry president before an election in anticipation that you might win. You don't grant this kind of power to ANY leader in a republican form of government. But that's how far we've strayed...

And if you didn't catch it last night, Levin was livid...

theRightScoop: Mark Levin was livid when he read that House Republicans had voted to eliminate the Senate confirmation process for the reported number of 169 presidential appointments. And the explanation he got from a couple of sources was that Romney had told Republicans to vote for it, so they did. Levin wonders if we are already going back to the days of George W. Bush when House and Senate members voted a certain way to support the president instead of the Constitution.

There's a soundbyte of Levin that's absolutely worth checking out included with that piece for a better perspective on this action. But he's absolutely right in his suspicion and response. Conservatives expect much more out of their representatives than to simply tow a party line dicated by a would-be-president, especially when we had the votes to stop this! There's no need to 'streamline' these appointments. If there that difficult to determine, then eliminate those positions and shrink the size of an overburdensome government! It's insane that Boehner and the Republican leadership in the House bend and bend and bend, then when they actually have the upper hand, they still bend...all in the name of bipartisanship...and what Romney wants.