03 May 2013

Confirming OIP Derangement Syndrome

From USA Today in February:

Senators who are considering [Treasury Secretary Jack] Lew's nomination have given him 444 written questions to answer -- more than the six previous Treasury nominees combined.

Most of those questions -- 395 -- came from Republicans.

(If you count multi-part questions as separate questions, Lew has to provide nearly 700 answers to the Senate.) . . .

Lew's 444 questions are more than double the previous Treasury record of 165 queries posed to another Obama nominee, Tim Geithner; the Senate eventually confirmed Geithner.

Geithner and previous Treasury nominees from both parties -- Henry Paulson, John Snowe, Paul O'Neill, Lawrence Summers and Robert Rubin -- received a total of 405 questions, according to numbers compiled by Democrats.

Republicans did not challenge the numbers, saying they have a lot of questions about how Lew conducted his job as budget director and the growth of the federal debt.
Of course, Republican Senators voted to add most of that debt by supporting policies of the Bush-Cheney administration. But now that we’re in the Obama administration, suddenly they showed a concern at a level not seen for twenty years combined.

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