WASHINGTON (AP) — For a brief moment in a season of partisan rancor, Senate Democrats and Republicans as well as the White House hit the pause button.
In a matter of minutes last month, more than 60 of President Barack Obama’s nominees to be ambassadors, financial regulators and senior agency officials sailed through Senate confirmation without acrimony.
That rare moment of comity before the Senate went on spring break is a sharp contrast to the Christmas-New Year’s holiday, when Obama used recess appointments to bypass Senate Republicans blocking his nominees to the National Labor Relations Board and the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The difference between the two events is that core union, consumer and business constituencies for one party or the other didn’t take vehement positions for or against the latest nominees.
