By John Ballard
Good news.
President Barack Obama intends to use the congressional recess to bypass the Senate and appoint Dr. Donald Berwick, an expert on patient care who's drawn fire from the GOP, to oversee Medicare and Medicaid, the White House announced late Tuesday.
The appointment was to be made Wednesday, with lawmakers out of town for their annual July Fourth break, White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said in a post on the White House blog.
The decision means Berwick can assume the post of administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services without undergoing confirmation hearings in the Senate. Republicans have indicated they're prepared to oppose him over comments he's made on rationing of medical care and other matters. Democrats want to avoid a nasty confirmation fight that could reopen the health care debate. Berwick was nominated in April but no confirmation hearing had been scheduled.
"Many Republicans in Congress have made it clear in recent weeks that they were going to stall the nomination as long as they could, solely to score political points," Pfeiffer wrote. "But with the agency facing new responsibilities to protect seniors' care under the Affordable Care Act, there's no time to waste with Washington game-playing."�
Also being appointed Wednesday were:
-Philip E. Coyle III as associate director for national security and international affairs at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
-Joshua Gotbaum as director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.
More at the link.
This may be bad news for Elena Kagan as it allows the Party of No to concentrate on a smaller number of targets.
But these positions are simply too important to lie fallow.
Laffy at Political Carnival got this informative graphic along with the news notice.
Perhaps if the Tea Party Know-Nothing Luddites had started sooner the president's inspiration would not have taken so long. Nasty, misleading anti-Kagan viral emails are swirling through the Internets.
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