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President Bush on Saturday railed against the Senate for not taking action on more than 180 of his nominees, arguing that the failure to do so affects national economy, the economy and public safety. “When men and women agree to serve in public office, we should treat them with respect and dignity, and that means giving them a prompt confirmation vote,” Bush said in his weekly radio address. “When the Senate fails to give nominees a timely vote, it leaves important positions in our government vacant…” In order to stress the importance of the pending nominations, the president pointed to unfilled vacancies in the Department of Justice, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Aviation Administration. Bush also noted that many of his judicial nominees are awaiting confirmation, an issue that has long been a point of contention between Senate Democrats and the White House. “These delays are irresponsible, they undermine the cause of justice, and I call on the United States Senate to give these nominees the up or down vote they deserve,” the president said. The Senate’s two most public and controversial confirmation votes of the last six months, for Fifth Circuit Court Judge Leslie Southwick and Attorney General Michael Mukasey, both resulted in nominees being confirmed. In the Democratic radio address, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) used the nation’s lagging economy to stump for tax reform. While he praised bipartisan cooperation to pass a stimulus package, the lawmaker said Bush’s goal was not to help those in need but rather to protect businesses. “The premise of this package is to put money in the hands of people who are in such dire economic straits that they have no choice except to spend the money back into the economy,” Rangel said. “In other words, the president is not doing this for compassionate reasons, but he is targeting the families who are struggling to put a roof over their heads, food on their table, send their kids back to school, and they want them to get the rebates because they are forced to spend the money to survive.” Rangel argued that it is time “to really ask the president what got us involved in this in the first place.” He pointed to rising poverty, weakness in the housing and credit markets, and increased healthcare and education costs in recent years that have strained the budgets of average families while the incomes of the wealthiest Americans have grown. “One thing’s for certain, if we had a more equitable tax system, a more equitable tax code that treated the people in the middle class with some of the dignity and preferential treatment that we give to those people in the higher income, they would not have to be targeted,” Rangel said. |
