Holds by Senators on Appointments

Appointment Hold Process

 United States Senators can place a "hold" on nominations of the President of the United States which are being considered for confirmation as required by the United States Constitution.  (There is a similar "hold" that can be applied to a bill or similar item of business before the Senate.)

     There is a rule in the Senate that limits the "secret" hold to 30 days, then it must be released or made public.  Most of the time it is to the advantage of the Senator because it is a leverage or political move which prospers in public.    It is a matter of practical courtesy among the elected Senators.  The hold can be a matter of public information, or it can be anonymous - meaning that a Senator wanting to place a hold only has to tell the leadership of the Senate that he is placing a hold on a given nomination or piece of business before the Senate.  The procedure is used by both political parties and is not the technique of a particular political group or organization.

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 If a "hold" is not voluntarily released by a Senator, it can be "blasted" or overridden by the vote of 60 Senators on a vote on the floor of the Senate - but 60 votes are required, and they can be difficult to come by.

        The question is sometimes raised about how a Senator can get away with what is clearly leverage against the usual parliamentary procedure of both houses of Congress, and most state and local governments.  There are probably two practical reasons:

    1.  There is an outrageous level of self-appreciation and cow-towing to each other among Senators.  It is, of course, entirely absurd and narcissistic - but it does exist, and it has always existed in one form or another among small legislative bodies.  There is little more offensive among the various aspects of Senate culture than this sort of aristocratic snot.

      2.  Both Houses of the Congress handle many, many transactions every day which are "passed without objection" by a Member.  That means that unless a Member stands up and objects to a particular action, there is no need for a vote of members on the item.  Obviously a Senator could tie up the Senate for months by simply requiring full body votes on many items.  An example of a item "passed without objection" would be not reading a proposed bill which might have several hundred or thousand pages.  A Senator may threaten to require a vote on everything if his "hold" isn't respected.

Current Hold on Turkish Amabassador

Frank Ricciardone has been nominated to be the United States Ambassador to Turkey. Senator Sam Brownback put a hold on the confirmation process in the Senate. It is hard to know if this is a situation where the Senator is doing Republican political game playing, or has a serious object. So far is sounds like nonsense politics. 11-01-10

A Court Justice in Core Trouble

When Justice Clarence Thomas was elevated to the Supreme Court of the United States in 1991 in what is a historically contentious confirmation process, there were several loose ends when it was over. There was, and is, a strong belief in many that there were serious sexual harassment issues which were buried in the fury of the process. Thomas' cantankerous public persona does not help the situation, nor does his judicial policy, but he has a right to each of those. But the Justice appears to be headed to a political disaster because of his personal life.

His wife is very publicly involved in the far right political exercise. Again, that is surely her right and privilege, but it irritates, right or wrong, those that would prefer Thomas were not on the Supreme Court bench. But the smoldering disaster took a new twist when she asked Anita Hill, the apparent target of his sexual indiscretions for an apology for Hill's testimony against Thomas during the 1991 confirmation hearings. (A number of reasonably balanced books and a series of polygraph studies over the years generally confirm Hill's testimony as probative. These are backed up by other women connected to Thomas one way or another during that period, all of whom had harassment issues with him. A new book out about all this in recent days may have triggered the call, too.)

By now, Chief Justice Roberts of the Supreme Court, has undoubtedly had a "Come to Jesus" meeting with Thomas cautioning him about managing all this without further damage to the Supreme Court itself. It is probably too late because Mrs. Thomas' conduct suggests there is a still hidden new serious issue which triggered the call - a suspicious wife might well make that sort of call.

Former Senator John Danforth of Missouri, (R), has said in recent years that his support of the Thomas nomination - Thomas was from Missouri - was a mistake. The gossipy sort of way Mrs. Thomas' call has been treated is rude and unpleasant, but way too much experience in way too many people involved in politics suggests there is at least one more fact which is not yet public. A Thomas couple divorce and a resignation from the Court, stubborn as Justice Thomas is, would be a place to make at least a two dollar bet.

Landrieu Hold

Senator Landrieu (D) of Louisiana continues to have a personal "hold" - allowed under Senate rules, on the Lew appointment to head the office of Management and Budget.

For the most part, it doesn't matter much because the Senate is not meeting to do confirmation matters until after the November 2 elections. Her reason for the hold is to force the President to release the moratorium on oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. This strategy is undoubtedly a campaign tactic to show her independence from the White House. (The White House has released the moratorium, although not necessarily in response to her muscle move in the Senate.)

Patronage Monsters

Through all of the histories of government, appointees of executives sometimes get off the harness and take off on their own political agendas. Their problem is that they lose their political base when they leave their powerful patron. Karl Rove is an interesting example of that phenomenon at this point in history.

He has operated since before the Nixon era as a political operative. He was a very young man at the time, and since then has been in the GOP political operations. (For what its worth, there are similar experiences in all political settings, Rove is just a good example at this time.) But, when he left the Bush White House near the end of that administration, he established his own political operations without a political base. His base is a commercial base and he is very good as a fund raising consultant, whether or not you approve of his ideas and approach.

The hurt - or the end point - of these attempts at marshalling power are almost always real damage to the person following this path. At best, they are out of any real power because they become the target of their enemies instead of shifting that heat up to their patrons who do have a political base. No matter how much a person might have disliked Rove's conduct during the Bush administration, those who opposed his conduct held the President responsible, not Rove.

Of course many people who have held patronage positions go on to have extensive political careers - but only if they continue to be appointed to positions of increasing importance, or they run for office and develop the political constituency necessary to be creditable. 11-01-10

Holds on Nominations and Confirmations and Archived Materials

      The day-to-day purpose of this page is to provide information we get about "holds" of United States Senators on Presidential nominations and confirmation.  Be cautious with this information because we have to work hard to get information about holds, and may well miss some of them.  We have little information about anonymous holds except we may know they have been applied.  We are also slow, sometimes, in finding out when a hold is removed.  (We are currently surveying nominations for holds, and should have reasonably good information posted in the next 30 days.  11-03-09)

The President Used the Senatorial "HOLD" Rule

President Obama - while a United States Senator from Illinois before his election - used the "hold" rules against appointments just as Senators are using the rule against his appointments today.  He has complained about what he considers the inappropriate delay in appointments during the last week - even though he used the same process in the Senate while there.  02-02-10

The legislative process to manage the Senator's issue about unions is to wait until Soothers takes a shot at establishing the unions and then try to stop it in the normal Senatorial business.  The Senator has repeatedly used the hold rule to block important nominations for some underlying reason.  He also has a history of using false statements, or twisting the facts for a political purpose.  Other senators of both parties use the hold rule on other nominations.  The alternative is for the Senate to change its rule back to voting on nominations and issues - not allowing individual Senators absolute dictatorial power over these matters.  10-09-10

Senator Bond of Missouri Enforcing "Hold" on GSA Nominee

Senator Kit Bond - a longtime hack politician from Missouri, is retiring and on the way out, dishing out another in a long history of the worst smell of Missouri county politics.  He is "holding" the nomination of Obama GSA nominee Martha Johnson for reasons lost in his mind somewhere.  This leaves the GSA - the Nation's largest purchasing and management agency, in the hands of a temporary fill-in leader.  Bond is known for taking illegal campaign contributions which he has had to cough up later in places as remote as Butte Montana. 01-29-10

When politics are tiresome and dangerous!  

We have seen the TSA - the Transportation Safety Administration - under serious challenge because of high risk mistakes in recent days.  Part of the reason is because of a Senator's muscle politics.  What has happened is that Senator James DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, has put a "Senatorial hold" on the nomination of Erroll Southers to head the TSA.  This has been going on for months, leaving the TSA without a leader.  The Senator has released the following statement on January 1 2010:

 "Erroll Southers has not been forthcoming about whether he'll give union bosses control of our airport security, which is one of the most important decisions he'll make as head of the TSA. Mr. Southers' unwillingness to form a position on collective bargaining seriously calls into question his judgment, because it weakens security and has already been rejected by the CIA, the FBI, the Secret Service, the Coast Guard, and by every previous TSA administrator."

01-03-10 Erroll G. Southers was nominated to head the Transportation Security Administration.  Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina has placed a hold on the nomination.  His position is that Southers will unionize the TSA, DeMint opposes that.  Some facts about Souther's conduct in relation to private material for personal use is further complicating the nomination.

11-04-09 - Senators Bunning (R-KY), and DeMint, (R-SC) added "holds" today - for a variety of reasons related to Federal Reserve policy.

11-03-09 - Senator Bernard Sanders of Vermont has placed a Senator's "Hold" on the nomination and confirmation of Ben Bernanke for his four year term as Chair of the Federal Reserve Bank.  The Senator is objecting to the power presently held by the Federal Reserve and is attempting to lever changes in the legal powers of the Fed.  This is a leverage hold, although the Senator objects to the nomination itself, to

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