January 12, 2002
Bush Bypasses Senate on 2 More Nominees
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
ASHINGTON, Jan. 11 — Seeking to end a months-long stalemate, President Bush used a backdoor procedure to appoint two nominees to high-ranking positions in the State and Labor Departments today after they had failed to win Senate approval.
Over the objections of some Senate Democrats, Mr. Bush appointed Otto J. Reich as assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs and Eugene Scalia as Labor Department solicitor.
The president's action could complicate his relations with the Senate, where Senator Tom Daschle, who is the majority leader, and a handful of other top Democrats adamantly objected to the nominations.
Mr. Bush filled the positions under a procedure known as a recess appointment. The Constitution authorizes the president to fill vacant positions when the Senate is in recess, as it is now. The appointees may serve without confirmation until the end of the Congressional session at the end of the year; a majority of senators can remove them at any time.
A White House spokeswoman, Anne Womack, said today that Senate Democrats had forced the president's hand by refusing to grant a confirmation hearing to Mr. Reich and blocking a full Senate vote for Mr. Scalia, whose nomination was approved in committee.
"Both nominations have been sitting in the Senate for months," Ms. Womack said. "They're both critical nominations for this administration. By failing to act, the Senate gave the president no other option but to exercise his Constitutional right to appoint them by recess appointment."
Mr. Daschle issued a statement calling Mr. Bush's action "regrettable."
He said that the nomination of Mr. Scalia, who is the son of Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court, eventually would have come up for a vote by the full Senate. White House officials disputed that today.
"We also said it appeared that Mr. Scalia's record of hostility toward worker protections would have made his confirmation unlikely," Mr. Daschle said.
Turning to the status of Mr. Reich, he added: "Senators on both sides of the aisle had also raised questions about Mr. Reich's nomination based on his record, both in government and in the private sector."
Mr. Reich's nomination to become the top American diplomat for the Western Hemisphere drew strong opposition from a group of senators led by Senator Christopher J. Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat who is chairman of the foreign relations subcommittee on Latin America. The standoff threatened to revive the fractious debates over Central America policy between Congress and the Reagan White House two decades ago.
In the mid-1980's, Mr. Reich led a covert program to generate public support in the United States for the anti-Sandinista rebels, or contras, in Nicaragua. As the Iran-contra affair became known, a government investigation concluded that Mr. Reich's office had engaged in prohibited acts of domestic propaganda. Mr. Reich's defenders have denounced the inquiry as flawed and note that no charges were filed against him.
Mr. Reich went on to serve as ambassador to Venezuela. More recently, he has worked as a consultant and lobbyist for companies with a variety of interests in Latin America. Mr. Reich, who was born in Cuba, has also been an outspoken critic of President Fidel Castro.
Senator Dodd raised concerns that Mr. Reich's business ties and political agenda left him unqualified for the post and with a "a tin ear when it comes to ethical considerations."
Mr. Dodd suggested that Mr. Reich's appointment could jeopardize the administration's efforts to forge a bipartisan approach to regional issues of free trade, drug- trafficking and immigration.
But supporters of Mr. Reich said his knowledge of Latin America and the Washington bureaucracy made him amply qualified to handle a region that Mr. Bush has declared a foreign policy priority. His appointment was greeted with special enthusiasm by Cuban-Americans, an important constituency for the Bush administration.
Mr. Scalia, who will occupy the Labor Department's third highest position and serve as the secretary's legal adviser, found himself in the cross hairs of organized labor because of his opposition to some worker protection initiatives.
He once denounced as "quackery" and "junk science" a Clinton administration regulation on ergonomics designed to reduce injuries due to repetitive motion; the Bush administration repealed it in March.
John J. Sweeney, the president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., called Mr. Scalia's appointment "a slap in the face of American workers."
Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who heads the committee on labor, said he regretted the president's move.
As the department's solicitor, Mr. Scalia, a Washington lawyer, will oversee about 180 laws affecting safety and health in the workplace, workers' compensation, minimum wage guarantees and job training.