Daschle's Confirmation Bogs Down In Committee

WASHINGTON -- Former Sen. Tom Daschle's confirmation as secretary of Health and Human Services has slowed as the Republican staff on the Senate Finance Committee staff examines his tax records and his association with an education-loan provider that is separately under committee scrutiny.

Republican committee aides stressed they haven't determined there is a problem in any of their examinations. They said it was the complexity of the issues that is slowing the process, not a suggestion of impropriety. GOP aides said they won't schedule a confirmation hearing until they have answered their questions, which means his nomination likely won't be considered by the Finance Committee before President-elect Barack Obama is sworn into office.

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Comments

[yesivoteddem]

. Mr. Daschle and his wife define DC style corpotate lobbyist - lawyer corruption.

When he was majority leader she became the highest paid lobbyist in town.

When he lost his seat he became one of the highest paid lawyer/lobbyist in towm (and proof that Obamas lobby ban was nothing but bs pr spin)

They both should be staying at the ritziest federal jail in the land.

Two words to wipe away my distaste for the choice of this stain on my Party....,

HOWARD DEAN!

[ProudLiberalDan]

The Republicans are scared of universal health care and the insurance industry will keep their campaign coffers flowing to try and stop it.

Universal Health Care would ensure the Republicans were in the minority for a generation.

[joeinvt]

As a Democrat and Obama supporter, I believe that Obama's appointees should be held to a high standard - certainly higher than the one that characterized the Bush administration. It is important that Daschle's relationship with Catherine Reynolds be subjected to sufficient that it won't end up derailing Obama's plans for health insurance a year or two from now.

[jayjaga]

It appears the rethugs are constituting themselves into stumbling blocks for O's plan to put back the economy on track. Methinks this attitude is turning into a national sabotage and must be viewed by all well meaning citizens as suck.

[Gericault]

The republicans are sandbagging against the tide.

If your not part of the solution you are part of the problem.

Let's just keep up the pressure.

[dems08]

Pubs are examining his association with "an education-loan provider".

Figures, pubs hate education for the masses.

[murphy80]

dear harry reid

Get a Grip

instead of kissing Leeberman and his GOP obstructio­nists.....­.

Get a Grip or Get Out

[LBA7895]

The Republicans KNOW (a) that if Daschle is confirmed, national health care is headed for implementation, and (b) if national health care is implemented by Democrats, the Republican Party is finished!

OBAMA CAN IMPLEMENT NATIONAL HEALTH CARE IN A NANO-SECOND BY SIMPLY EXPANDING MEDICARE AND HAVING ANYONE UNDER 65 PAY A PREMIUM!

WRITE YOUR DEOMCRATIC SENATORS AND TELL THEM YOU WANT MEDICARE EXPANDED TO COVER THE 47 MILLION PEOPLE THE REPUBLICANS HAVE BLOCKED FROM GETTING HEALTH CARE INSURANCE.

[DFutureIsNow]

You are so right, they are running scared those rethugs.

[395spoons]

ABSOLUTELY RIGHT ON!

[keepemhonest]

LBA7895 - I cannot contact either of my senators because BOTH are 2 of the most rightwinged GOP senators in DC ... opps ... I just gave away my location.

[Grunty1]

Contact them anyways and try to get as many people to contact them as possible

They may be partisan hacks, but they still need to get reelected.

[klondiker]

Geithner, Holder, Dashcle...I wonder who's next...

Ironically, it looks like Hillary's is the only nomination that will go through without drama.

[DFutureIsNow]

Hillary without drama? Dick Lugar basically said any donation to the Clinton Foundation was a conflict of interest, the main reason Hillary will be nominated is because republicans know they would be playing with fire and more than likely get burned, its more politics than anything else.

[395spoons]

Surprisingly!

[PoliticalAmazon]

The Clintons are now part of the Republican establishment. Because WJC hangs out with Bush Sr and because the Clintons are so powerful now, it's easy for conservatives (who really are herd animals) to accept the Clintons as leaders in the absence of any strong conservative leadership.

[rasit]

The Republicans are once again proving to the nation that they are more interested in standing in the way of progress than caring about the American people.....Let them have their 'fun' while they can, as more of them will disappear in 2010....

They didn't stand in the way of Alberto Gonzales confirmation, the "waterboarding" supporter...
They didn't show outrage when Bush commuted Scooter Libbey's sentence

HYPOCRITES.......

[bygollymissmolly]

Ok Obama, fck bipartisanship. It's time to treat the Republicans the same way they treated the Democrats for 8 long years. The don't deserve to be included in anything.

[DFutureIsNow]

Maybe thats what Obama wanted, he can always say I tried my best to bring them into the fold but they rejected me at every corner, smart politics, republicans look like 5 year old kids and Obama looks like the adult, can you spell WIN WIN!!!

[PoliticalAmazon]

IMO, Obama is in this for 2 basic reasons:
1) He truly does want to turn American back from the brink of destruction.
2) He truly does want to do what he can to gain rank and privileges for himself.

If you take the Clintons for an example, after WJC left office, he started palling around with the Republican luminaries like Bush Sr. Soon Murdoch was supporting Hillary's candidacies for the Senate and, later, for president.

The Clintons have become more powerful than gawd almighty not because they stood up to the Republicans, but because they became functioning Republicans.

Look at Hillary's voting record in the Senate. She was very supportive of the major neocon agenda, which in every case was against the best interests of the rest of America.

So I think Obama is very smart, and he will do what it takes to become more powerful than the Clintons. And that means giving the Republicans what they want when necessary.

[bygollymissmolly]

Excuse me, but I certainly don't remember the Democrats nit picking Bush's nominations to death. This is going to be a very hard 8 years. The Republicans don't care about us or this country, they only care about scoring points against Obama and the Democrats. Shame on them.

[Shashi0224]

Republican mantra: Party First......Country go h*ll!

[keepemhonest]

bygolly,

I notpicked them to death .... especially AFTER it became public they were breaking laws

[drlouise]

With their approval rating tanking, you'd think Congress would want to be part of the solution. Doesn't the GOP realize we've voted for cooperation and change and an end to the nastiness. Just how out of the loop are they?

[Shashi0224]

Completely out of the loop - and out of their minds!!

[PoliticalAmazon]

GOP congressional members are being hammered by their most nutball base (who I call the 27-Percenters), including the religious right.

They have no strong leadership at this point, so they are following the old leadership, the Bush administration, even though it was highly unsuccessful and dysfunctional. They will continue to emulate Bush Jr's leadership until another strong GOP leader comes along. When you think it may be Sarah Palin, with the 27-Percenters polled as believing she would make a good president, it makes one ponder what kind of leadership the GOPers will emulate next.

Make no mistake about it: a GOP without a strong leader is very dangerous to our country. They MUST follow--it's how they are genetically wired, so they will follow any strong leader that arises from the cesspool.

[Grunty1]

They are closer to the 20%ers these days.

[buckbuck11]

Now, suddenly Republicans are into scrutiny and oversight????

Awakened after their eight-year hibernation; a long national nightmare for the rest of us.

[PoliticalAmazon]

Well, of course they're not. Whether someone was confirmed or not has always been "does my party boss want it?" The conservatives truly are lemmings, and it is very difficult for them to not do what their leader tells them to.

Really, at this point, the GOP can do nothing else of its own volition but obstruct. They don't have what it takes to try to put together a positive set of policies to fix the country, and they got their kiesters kicked in November partly because of that.

So they obstruct.

And because Democrats in Congress, IMO, really have supported the neocon agenda, they won't smack them around to get them into line. Dems want to fix the problems, but the problems weren't necessarily (as I see them interpreting our country's destruction) due to the neocon agenda, but to the poor administratiion of Bush Jr.

[sandals]

I remeber when Bush appointees were being confirmed it was fist on the table from the Rethugs saying the Dems were abstructionist, well same to them, i am sure it is all just procedural.
But never trust the Rethugs!

[PoliticalAmazon]

They will continue to act in this manner until they are brought up short on a leash.

WJC did it by calling Gingrich's bluff, ending up with Gingrich being blamed for the government nearly coming to a halt over the budget. After that, the GOPers were very careful how they challenged WJC.

In fact, the reason that they resorted to the N00keyGate fiasco is because they were afraid to challenge WJC after he called Gingrich's bluff.

[Spud777]

Once again: republicans prove Hypocrisy-R-Us.