Senate committee approves effort to streamline appointments

The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Thursday approved a bill that would streamline the process of appointing executive branch officers.

The bill's sponsor, Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., said the changes would inject "a little common sense" in the appointments process.

"The presidential appointments process is unnecessarily long, burdensome, and complex," Thompson explained last December, when he introduced the bill. "And although President Bush has sent a notable number of nominees to Congress at this point in his first year, major gaps remain in critical positions throughout government. We are faced with responding to the events of September 11 with a 25-percent vacancy rate in positions considered important to Homeland Security."

Thompson said that bill (S. 1811), which passed on a voice vote, would make changes in the 1978 Ethics in Government Act like those that have been recommended by the Brookings Institution's Presidential Appointee Initiative, the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research's Transition to Governing Project, and the American Bar Association. It would reduce financial reporting requirements, cut down on redundant requests for information, and ask each agency for a list of presidential appointees, with an eye to cutting the number of positions that require Senate approval.

Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, told the committee he had recently spoken with a cabinet official who had been forced to spend more than $500,000 on accountants and attorneys' fees as part of the appointment process, more than he would make in four years on the job.

The committee also passed, on a voice vote, an amendment--sponsored by Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, and Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio,--making technical changes in the bill.