The Disfunctional Senate

We learned today that Republican Senator Shelby of Alabama has put a "hold" on seventy presidential appointees in an attempt to extort some earmarks for a big campaign contributor. The obvious lesson from this is that the rules of the Senate are unworkable in an environment like today's extrem partisanship. It's a system built for gridlock.

Let me suggest that there is another lesson too. There are way too many Presidential appointees (3000 or so) under the present system. One fourth of the way through the president's term of office, many senior jobs are still unfilled. Worse, because the appointees are political rewards, key jobs often go to gross incompetents - think "heck-of-a-job" Brownie, for example.

Other countries manage to work pretty well with much smaller numbers of appointees. Senior civil servants should occupy most of those three thousand jobs. The Cabinet, a couple of dozen key aides, and the presidents own staff (who don't require confirmation) should be more than enough. Presidents should be expected to submit their nominees on their second day of office, and the appointees should be guranteed an up or down vote by April.

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