"Hostage" Negotiating At GSA
By Robert Brodsky
President Obama is turning up the heat on Senate Republicans to finally allow a vote on his nominee to run the General Services Administration, Martha Johnson. A former GSA chief of staff, Johnson has been blocked for the past several months by a hold from Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri.--or as Obama described it at a meeting of Senate Democrats on Wednesday: "hostage" taking.
A transcript of Obama's remarks:
"So this is an example of where I'm going to reach out to Mitch McConnell; I know Harry has as well. And I'm just going to say, look, if the government is going to work for the American people, I can't have the administrator for GSA, which runs every federal facility, all federal buildings all across the country -- here we are, we're trying to save billions of dollars, cut waste -- Claire McCaskill has been all on top of how can we audit our spending -- and we could save billions of dollars in ending old leases that don't work or renegotiating them or consolidating buildings and efficiencies. But I don't have a GSA administrator, even though I nominated somebody who was well qualified several months ago, and nobody can tell me that there's anything particularly wrong with her. They're blocking her because of some unrelated matter. I don't know, you guys may know better than I do. And that is -- that has to end. It has to end. And the American people want it to end."
Let's have a fight about real stuff. Don't hold this woman hostage. If you have an objection about my health care policies, then let's debate the health care policies. But don't suddenly end up having a GSA administrator who is stuck in limbo somewhere because you don't like something else that we're doing, because that doesn't serve the American people. Then they don't know what the argument is about. Then it's just sort of a plague on both your houses because it looks like you guys are just fighting all the time. And we've got to put an end to that.
Incidentally, a cloture vote on Johnson's nomination is scheduled on Thursday, followed by a full Senate vote on her nomination.