Obama calls end around on CBP chief, nominees

Obama calls end around on CBP chief, nominees    President Barack Obama on Saturday said he will use a backdoor approach to install Alan Bersin as commissioner of Customs and Border Protection six months after nominating him for the post.

Obama

   Obama plans to make 14 other recess appointments for key administration officials whose confirmations have been stalled in Congress, including that of Eric Hirschhorn as under secretary of Commerce for export administration and head of the Bureau of Industry and Security.
   After spending the better part of a year trying unsuccessfully to work with Republicans in Congress, the president filled the vacant jobs while Congress was on vacation and just days after passing a massive health care bill without any Republican support. The White House blamed Republicans for deliberately obstructing his appointments.

Bersin

   'Most of the men and women whose appointments I am announcing today were approved by Senate committees months ago, yet still await a vote of the Senate. At a time of economic emergency, two top appointees to the Department of Treasury have been held up for nearly six months. I simply cannot allow partisan politics to stand in the way of the basic functioning of government,' he said in a statement.
   The White House pointed out that President Obama has 77 nominees currently waiting for an approval vote, 58 of whom have been waiting for more than two weeks. Of those, 44 have been waiting for more than a month. At the same point in time in 2002, President Bush had only five nominees pending on the floor of the Senate.
   The 15 recess appointments had been languishing for an average of seven months apiece, most of them due to holds placed on their nominations by individual senators.
   But Bersin was not one of them. Bersin's nomination was tied up by unspecified bureaucratic inertia within the Senate Finance Committee and was not the target of a hold. That's because senators cannot place a 'hold' on a nomination until after a nomination has been reported out of a committee and is ready to move to the floor for a vote.

Napolitano

   He has been waiting in the wings for his CBP post ever since April 2009 when Janet Napolitano, Department of Homeland Security secretary, appointed him as the department's special border czar with primary responsibility for coordinating the department's strategy regarding security, immigration, narcotics and trade affecting Mexico.

Related News •   Stalled confirmation for CBP top post stokes frustration

   During the Clinton administration, Bersin was U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California and then spent five years in a similar role as the Justice Department's Southwest border representative. Bersin subsequently spent seven years as superintendent of the San Diego public school system and 18 months as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's education secretary.
   The recess appointments only last until January 2011, when the Senate finishes its term. The recess appointment also ends if any of the 15 people are confirmed by the Senate, which would enable them to serve until the end of the Obama administration's first term in January 2013.
   Other presidents have also used the mechanism to skirt the Senate confirmation process when they could not overcome delaying tactics. President Bush made more than 170 such appointments during his two terms in office and President Clinton made 139, according to the non-partisan Congressional Research Service.
   'We also hope that this politically motivated gridlock comes to an end, because each day we dedicate to a strategy aimed at gumming up the works of our government is another day we aren't doing right by the American people,' the White House said.
   It complained that objections to the President's nominees have nothing to do with their qualifications. At one point a senator put a blanket hold on all Obama nominees in an attempt to win concessions on two projects that would benefit his state, and another nominee's confirmation was delayed by one senator for more than eight months because of a disagreement over a proposed federal building in his home state, it said.
   The most controversial appointment is that of union lawyer Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board, which mediates disputes between unions and employers in the private sector. Becker works for the Service Employees International Union and the AFL-CIO. Republican senators, plus two Democrats, had blocked his confirmation because of fears he would vote in favor of unions in labor disputes and help create rules making it easier for unions to organize. Last week the entire caucus wrote Obama asking him not to appoint Becker during the two-week Easter recess. Democrats have not been able to muster the 60 votes needed to overcome the filibuster.
   The U.S. Chamber of Commerce denounced the Becker appointment. 'The business community should be on red alert for radical changes that could significantly impair the ability of America's job creators to compete,' Randel K. Johnson, vice president of labor, immigration and employee benefits, said in a statement.
   Obama also intends to bypass the confirmation process for:
   ' Frank J. Sanchez, nominee for under secretary for international trade at the Department of Commerce. He serves as a senior advisor to Commerce Secretary Gary Locke on international trade issues. He served as a policy advisor on Latin America to the Obama campaign and was a special assistant to President Clinton on international affairs. Clinton later appointed him as assistant secretary of transportation in charge of aviation policy and overseeing international negotiations.
   ' Michael Punke, to be deputy U.S. trade representative, and Islam A. Siddiqui, to be the chief agriculture negotiator for the U.S. Trade Representative. The two men were victims of a hold by Sen. Jim Bunning of Kentucky who was using his to get U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk to take legal action in the World Trade Organization against Canada for banning flavored tobacco, which has restricted tobacco exports from Kentucky.
   Punke will also serve as U.S. ambassador and permanent representative to the World Trade Organization in Geneva. He will move to Geneva to assume the post, the USTR said.
   Punke has worked in international trade law and policy for two decades. From 1995 to 1996, he was senior policy advisor to the USTR. There he advised the agency on issues ranging from agricultural trade to intellectual property protection. From 1993 to 1995, Punke served at the White House as director for international economic affairs with a joint appointment to the National Security Council and the National Economic Council.
   Since January 2010, Punke has served as a consultant to the USTR.
   Siddiqui was vice president for science and regulatory affairs at CropLife America. From 1997 to 2001, he served in various capacities in the Clinton administration at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. From 2004 to 2005, he was with the Commerce Department's Industry Trade Advisory Committee on Chemicals, Pharmaceuticals, and Health/Science Products & Services. Between 2001 and 2003, he was appointed senior associate to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he focused on agricultural biotechnology and food security issues.
   ' Rafael Borras, nominee for under secretary for management at the Department of Homeland Security. He is a vice president with engineering services firm URS Corp. He also has experience in the Commerce Department and as a deputy city manager in Hartford, Conn. ' Eric Kulisch