Dec 19, 2023

O'Malley Nomination Spurred Few Passions

     From Politico:

... The vote [on the nomination of Martin O'Malley to become Commissioner of Social Security] was 50-11, with 39 senators absent for the chamber's first vote the week before Christmas as lawmakers continue working on an international aid and border security supplemental package.

Longtime Senate reporters and procedural experts called it the worst attendance for a vote that they could recall for at least the last two decades. ...

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congress yaps a lot about telework and federal employees not having butts in seats to do their jobs, but must be nice to just have weeks off and miss votes with no repercussions.

Anonymous said...

They simply don’t care about ssa

Anonymous said...

How many days off do legislators have off? Vacations take no back seat to anything in Washington. Let’s see what happens to a possible government shutdown. Happy Holidays!

Anonymous said...

Check out how they voted:
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1181/vote_118_1_00347.htm

For the most part, the nonvoting senators were Rs. They made a big deal about Biden firing Saul. But SSA is clearly in bad shape, and the appointment ends January 5, 2005. So they just didn’t vote in order to be able to say that they didn’t support Biden appointing a replacement for Saul.

Anonymous said...

With an appointment that portends to last just about a year, its not like much enduring change is going to occur. He will take the helm, assess the bridge team, give direction to the deck chair arranging team and make a few stirring speeches. Then, he will have made his mark and left the SSA Titanic to continue its listing demise.

BOTH parties are to blame for allowing Social Security to drift into ruin. Republicans cut staffing with no solutions. Democrats do nothing except to propose expanding entitlements to further drain the trust fund.

Anonymous said...

Nah. Biden is getting re-elected, so O'Malley will get 5+ years to make his mark on the agency. God speed Martin!