The Advocate. March 3, 2022.
Editorial: Give nominees a hearing and vote; don’t play kids’ games in U.S. Senate
What gives? Government has always operated with some consideration for politics, but it was kind of a slam-dunk when a president renominated a prominent official originally appointed by a predecessor of the other party.
No longer, and our own John N. Kennedy, of Madisonville, is one of the senators resorting to schoolyard bullying tactics against President Joe Biden’s nominees to the Federal Reserve System.
We don’t know that we’re in favor of all the nominations, as Louisiana’s interests are deeply tied to a rational energy policy and some Biden actions are actively hostile to that industry. The Fed’s jobs are monetary stability and full employment, not viewing every decision through a climate-change lens.
But whether we’re for them or against them, you can’t run a government with pettiness like a blockade against nominees getting a hearing and a vote.
The Senate Banking Committee Republicans, Kennedy included, refused to show up last month, even though the headline nominee was Jay Powell, who was first appointed by former President Donald Trump and renominated by Biden. That prevented a vote on five nominees for the Board of Governors for the nation’s central bank.
We have held for many years that the nomination process is broken and corrupted by politics. Nominees to high government positions may or may not be confirmed, but they tend to be highly qualified individuals with something to say. Both parties ought to be committed to hearings.
When Banking senators, or those on other committees, refuse a hearing, they are corrupting one of the normal processes of government.
Do we want these kind of kids’ games in the United States Senate?
The big confirmation fights lately have been on justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. Biden’s nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is the next major battle.
We don’t doubt that Kennedy, on the Judiciary Committee as well as Banking, will be a critical questioner. We hope he will reflect, as he should have on the Banking fiasco, what is the purpose of the consent process to nominations. It is not to deny a president well-qualified nominees. Our old-fashioned opinion is that a judge’s views should not be made into the political circuses we have seen too many times.
Whether a judge meets liberal litmus tests or those of conservatives is not always a good guide to how they will rule on many cases, although that correlation is closer than many ever expected it to be in today’s highly partisan political world.
What is most important is that the Senate should consent to qualified nominees, not indulge in the sort of political gameplaying that denied a seat on the high court to a very qualified Merrick Garland in 2016 — another shameful Republican blockade that is to the everlasting discredit of GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
Like too many senators these days — Kennedy, are you listening? — McConnell seems impervious to shame.
Jackson served on the District of Columbia bench and on the U.S. appeals court that is arguably the second-most important in the land. Is she qualified and able? That’s the only question Kennedy and Republicans, as well as Democrats, should focus on.
And no more blockades, please.
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