Democrats Demand Bush Halt Efforts To Place Political Appointees In Career Jobs

Washington Post:

Democrats in the Senate called on President Bush to halt any effort by his administration to place political appointees in career jobs just weeks before his team leaves office.

But the White House yesterday said there is no orchestrated effort to embed Bush loyalists in the federal workforce before Barack Obama's inauguration Jan. 20. As happens with any handover of administration, hundreds of current officials in political jobs will be forced to relinquish their posts, and career workers will stay on.

Read the whole story: Washington Post

Comments

[truthyguy]

You can't trust that lying SOB Bush or anyone who works for him. He will do everything he can to undermine Obama and the Democrats because doing so is more important to him than the welfare of the country.

[vippy]

Are you kidding he owes them for cooperating with him. He had to promise something to get them
in lock step with his policies and the trampling of our constitution. And what will the DEMS do?
Nothing at all.

[lochnessmonster]

He's just trying to keep the unemployment roles down...give him a break people!

[JohnFromCensornati]

Too late now. Maybe they should have left something on the table.

[scooperss]

pelosi is not doubt as corrupt as...........

[Rog49Thomas]

I think that President Neo should keep a list of all these midnight appointments and then when his Administration takes over reassign these staff to new high level positions created specially for them in our embassies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Equitorial Guinea, Rwanada, Laos, and Myanmar so that their talents could be put to good use helping these countries.

[scooperss]

Good idea!

[proudem]

Brilliant!

[Carolab]

Well, here's a laundry list from the Heritage Foundation on how Bush should protect his right to put personnel in place that would carry out his policies:

http://www.heritage.org/research/governmentreform/BG1403.cfm

The Hatch Act, enacted in 1939, was originally designed to erect a wall of separation between the federal civil service and partisan politics. The law can still easily trip up new appointees, even though President Clinton signed legislation into law in 1993 to weaken its provisions, reducing barriers to partisan political activities on the part of federal employees.

The President must make sure that his team at the White House and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) initiate the essential training of the political appointees in their management responsibilities under the Civil Service Reform Act and the Hatch Act.

The new President and his team should recognize the tendency of every outgoing Administration, whether Democratic or Republican, to try to "burrow" non-career, or political, appointees into career positions. Political appointees of the Clinton Administration over the course of eight years have already burrowed into the federal civil service. With the unusually long election season, doubtless more Clinton political appointees have been seeking every loophole available in civil service law to burrow into the career bureaucracy and secure permanent civil service protection. Bush should ask his management team to review these conversions for their legality and then quickly rectify any career conversion actions that were inappropriate.

[tryharder2think]

wait for it....

---- BBBBBBBBBbuuuuutttttt CLIIIIIINNNNNTTTTTTOOOOONNNN!!!!

[newshawk14]

Bush appointees have been proven to be loyal, but very incompetent, I hope Obama roots them
all out, and begins to replace them with qualified people, who have a genuine commitment to
public service.

[Carolab]

Well, gee is a "strongly worded letter" gonna get it? From the article: The GAO reported in May 2006 that during the first four years of the Bush administration, 144 political appointments were converted to career positions. Thirty-six were at the Health and Human Services Department, 23 were at the Justice Department, 21 were at the Defense Department and 15 were at the Treasury Department.

It also says 18 of those people promoted were not qualified and proper procedures were not followed. Does that mean those placements can be reversed, or not? Or any other the GAO finds improper?

[SouthPrairie]

Seems he'll never grow tired of sticking his finger in the eyes of Americans.

[DontJustFollow]

What's next? Pulling all the O's off the keyboards or stealing White House furniture?

[DontJustFollow]

What's next? Pulling all the O's off the keyboards and stealing White House furniture?

[20090120]

All a political appointment means is that these 'Bushie's', similar to 'Heck of a job, Brownie', are incapable and incompetent of finding working in the real work-a-day world and pleaded and begged Bush not to forget them and let them have to find 'real' work as the clock ticks down on their fake reality. From the movie 'Blazing Saddles', "We've gotta protect our phoney baloney jobs, gentlemen!" So true as it relates to these bureaucratic 'Bushies'.

[LiberalBuzz]

Yeah right, like Bush listens to anyone but those he owes favors to.

As far as he is concerned democrats don't exist and never have.

[zigzag1]

Religious Right Payoff....recent graduates of unaccredited christian colleges given jobs for which they have no expertise, hiring others based on their abortion stance.

[DontJustFollow]

no kidding - only we can appoint or reject based on a persons abortion stance!!!

[darthdarcy]

They need to use leverage to stop Bush burying these IED's, such as investigating his long list of crimes as well as Cheney's and exposing them all for posterity in fact finding efforts for years for this Scorched Earth policy he is so busily engaged in in his final days...