Thursday, February 11, 2010

Day 42- Form letters and recess appointments

I received my first letter from The White House today! It is a form letter, one which is neither surprising nor particularly interesting. Still, it was lovely hearing from the office of the President.

Dear Mr. President,

Today I write to express my support of your threat to use recess appointments to fill the critical positions still waiting on Senate confirmation. I think that, should the Senate continue to demonstrate such enthusiasm for holding up the business of the government by blocking your perfectly qualified nominees, you should continue to publicly redress their behavior by any means necessary.

I appreciate the history and the tradition of Senate rules, but this is absurd. To hold up the appointments of qualified individuals for critical positions in government for legislative pork is truly an example of the worst kind of partisan politics. I'm all for respecting the separation of powers, but there is a point where the majority has to be allowed to govern.

Anyway, Mr. President, since the State of the Union it seems as though the administration is doing a much better job of communicating to the public, especially when it comes to pointing out just who is holding up the agenda. I'll admit this may be a matter of perception- certainly my decision to write to you every day has required me to pay attention to the daily communication from the White House- but even among my peers there seems to be a general consensus that your administration has had a new surge of energy and focus in the last few weeks.

I'd like to applaud the political maneuvering that today got 27 nominees confirmed. I think that, in the event the others continue to be held up, the public would recognize recess appointments as the right thing to do.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey

1 comment:

  1. http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Gold_Gupta_JLPP_article.pdf

    I haven't finished reading it yet, but it's interesting (got the link from wikipedia).

    ReplyDelete