Two weeks into U.S. Senate leaders’ deal to reduce filibusters against President Barack Obama’s nominees, senators have finally confirmed three members of the National Labor Relations Board. However, Iowa’s Republican Senator Chuck Grassley is not going along with the Senate’s “new normal.”
Not every confirmation vote is controversial. Grassley went along with the 98 to 1 majority that confirmed Derek West as associate attorney general last week, and the 93 to 1 majority that confirmed James Comey as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation earlier this week.
Yesterday, the Senate took up the president’s nominations for three vacant positions on the National Labor Relations Board. Frustrated by Senate Republicans’ refusal to confirm his nominees for that body, Obama took advantage of a Congressional recess to install three members on the labor board in January 2012. However, a federal court later struck down those recess appointments.
This summer, a growing number of Senate Democrats signaled that they were willing to support rules changes to limit the minority’s use of the filibuster, particular with respect to confirmation votes. To avert this so-called “nuclear option,” a few Republicans agreed not to filibuster a number of Obama appointees. As part of the deal, the president agreed to withdraw two National Labor Relations Board nominees he had installed using recess appointments. He replaced them with Nancy Schiffer and Kent Hirozawa. Schiffer is “a former associate general counsel at the AFL-CIO,” while Hirozawa has been serving as chief counsel to NLRB chairman Mark Gaston Pearce. Obama also nominated Pearce for a second term on the board. He had first joined the board as a recess appointee but was later confirmed in 2010 to a term ending this August.
Yesterday Grassley was one of 34 Republicans who voted against cloture (ending debate) on Hirozawa’s nomination. However, eleven Republicans voted with all the Democrats present to advance the nomination. Shortly thereafter, Hirozawa was confirmed on a mostly party-line 54 to 44 vote.
It was the same story on the other two nominations for the National Labor Relations Board. The motion to end debate on Schiffer’s nomination passed by 65 votes to 33, with Grassley in the “no” group. He also opposed Schiffer in the 54 to 44 vote on her confirmation.
The cloture motion on Pearce passed by a larger 69 to 29 majority, but again Grassley was in the group that tried to block the nomination from coming to a vote. Senators then confirmed Pearce by 59 votes to 38, with Grassley in the “no” group.
Obviously, Iowa’s Democratic Senator Tom Harkin supported all of these nominees. He has been one of the most vocal critics of using the filibuster against presidential appointees. Harkin has occasionally voted against presidential nominees, but he does not believe a super-majority should ever be needed to confirm them.