January 12, 2002 - Orange County Register: White House still stands behind Gaddi Vasquez

Peace Corps Online: Peace Corps News: Headlines: Peace Corps Headlines - 2002: 01 January 2002 Peace Corps Headlines: January 12, 2002 - Orange County Register: White House still stands behind Gaddi Vasquez

By Admin1 (admin) on Sunday, January 13, 2002 - 10:04 pm: Edit Post

White House still stands behind Gaddi Vasquez





Read and comment on this story from the Orange County Register on the recess appointments of Otto Recih and Eugene Scalia which includes White House comments on the nomination of Gaddi Vasquez as Peace Corps Director at:

President bypasses Senate on two picks*

* This link was active on the date it was posted. PCOL is not responsible for broken links which may have changed.



President bypasses Senate on two picks

Bush makes the recess appointments of conservatives Reich and Scalia.

January 12, 2002

By SANDRA SOBIERAJ The Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- Circumventing Senate opposition, President George W. Bush signed recess appointments Friday for conservatives Otto Reich as the chief U.S. diplomat in Latin America and Eugene Scalia as the top lawyer for the Labor Department.

Because Bush exercised his authority while Congress was in recess, Reich, a Cuban- American, and Scalia, son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, will be allowed to serve until Congress recesses again at the end of the year.

Conservatives applauded Bush for bypassing the Senate.

Top presidential appointments are subject to Senate confirmation.

The nomination of former Orange County Supervisor Gaddi Vasquez, Bush's pick to be the next Peace Corps director, is still pending in the Senate. White House spokesman Ken Lisaius on Friday wouldn't discuss the possibility of a recess appointment for Vasquez but reiterated that "we still stand behind him."

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said Friday that he had repeatedly promised a full Senate vote on Scalia.

"We also said it appeared that Mr. Scalia's record of hostility toward worker protections would have made his confirmation unlikely," said Daschle, D-S.D.

Unions had lobbied intensely to defeat Scalia, a Washington labor lawyer, in part for his opposition to Clinton- era ergonomics rules killed by Congress last spring.

Christopher Dodd, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which refused to give Reich a hearing, and his allies consider him to be unqualified.

Reich has closes ties to conservative anti-Castro groups in Miami.

Democrats' concerns also focus on his leadership in the 1980s of the State Department's one-time Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean.

The office was accused of running an illegal, covert domestic propaganda effort against Nicaragua's Sandinista government and in favor of the contra rebels.



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