Obama takes charge with recess appointments - Updated

A lot of us have been waiting for our President to make this move. The White House just announced President Obama is making 15 recess appointments who have been "waiting an average of 214 days for Senate "confirmation." And he called out the Republicans for their obstructionism

"The United States Senate has the responsibility to approve or disapprove of my nominees. But if, in the interest of scoring political points, Republicans in the Senate refuse to exercise that responsibility, I must act in the interest of the American people and exercise my authority to fill these positions on an interim basis," said President Barack Obama. "Most of the men and women whose appointments I am announcing today were approved by Senate committees months ago, yet still await a vote of the Senate. At a time of economic emergency, two top appointees to the Department of Treasury have been held up for nearly six months. I simply cannot allow partisan politics to stand in the way of the basic functioning of government."

Of course, that's only a fraction of nominees still outstanding. The President "has a total of 217 nominees pending before the Senate. These nominees have been pending for an average of 101 days, including 34 nominees pending for more than 6 months." I kind of wish he had just recess appointed all of them. It would have caused a total wingnut meltdown but it would only have lasted until the next shiny outrage came along and it would have better illustrated just how deep GOP obstruction goes.

Besides, we need to get these Democratic appointees into position to overcome the holdover Bush loyalists still in power. You may recall Bush seeded the bureaucracy many layers deep. As far as I know, Bush still holds the record for "Plum Book" appointments.

[More here from TPM and the White House.]

Update: A couple of facts to push back on the inevitable outrage over what the cons are terming "Obama's arrogance." From markknoller:
"Bush(43) made about 140 recess appointments over 8 years, Clinton 140; Bush(41) 77; Reagan 243." And from pwire: "Eisenhower used recess appointments to name three SCOTUS justices: Earl Warren, William Brennan, and Potter Stewart."

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]