CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
– EXECUTIVE BRANCH
April 2, 2009 – 3:26 p.m.
Sebelius Confirmation Delayed by Bunning Objection to Timing
By John Reichard, CQ Staff
Senate confirmation of Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to head the Department of Health and Human Services probably won’t take place until after the coming two-week recess because at least one senator has objected to an expedited procedure to move the nomination.
Finance Committee member Jim Bunning , R-Ky., confirmed Thursday night that he had objected to allowing the committee move up the finance panel’s vote.
“The rules that the Democrats made say that there’s a layover of two days,” Bunning said. “That’s what I objected to.”
Bunning said he also planned to oppose Sebelius’ nomination when the panel does hold a vote after the recess.
“I am going to vote ‘no’ on the nomination, but I wasn’t going to allow them to break their own rules,” he said.
Earlier Thursday, Committee Chairman Max Baucus , D-Mont. had predicted the Senate would confirm the nominee later that day.
Baucus indicated that the nomination would not be held up by Sebelius’ disclosure that she and her husband paid almost $8,000 in back taxes and interest owed because of filing errors.
The tax issue, revealed March 31, prompted no questions during the hearing.
Sebelius will play a central role in President Obama’s effort to overhaul the health care system.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) oversees programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and other public health and welfare agencies responsible for nearly $80 billion in annual discretionary spending and hundreds of billions more through entitlement programs.
The Obama administration appears to have dodged a Senate battle over abortion that might have come with Sebelius’ nomination. The governor has clashed several times with the Kansas Legislature over her support of abortion rights, but the state’s two conservative Republican senators, Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts — both prominent opponents of abortion — have lent her their support.
Thursday’s hearing featured a bipartisan goodwill for the nominee and a sense of urgency that a health overhaul is essential this year.
Deep partisan divisions appeared, however, when the hearing focused on whether Congress should create a government-run health insurance program alongside private plan options.
Even moderate Republican Olympia Snowe of Maine expressed skepticism about a public program, saying it should be a “last resort.” Sebelius, however, offered a firm defense, citing as successful models programs in many states offering state employees a menu of health insurance plans.
Panel members also showed the divide over whether to use budget reconciliation procedures to move a health overhaul bill. The fast-track tactic would allow Democrats to forestall potential Republican filibusters in the Senate.
Michael B. Enzi , R-Wyo., gently counseled Sebelius to refrain from advocating for the procedure, saying that a successful health overhaul will require bipartisan work to resolve many knotty issues.
The House budget resolution (
Enzi said that he, Roberts and Orrin B. Hatch, R-Utah, “have a great responsibility to keep Republicans calm through the debate.”
The hearing was almost devoid of surprises. When asked by Baucus, however, whether anything in her background might create a conflict of interest, Sebelius mentioned that an HHS ethics officer had noted two stocks in her husband’s portfolio. Sebelius said her spouse is committed to divesting them.
Details weren’t immediately available on the stocks involved or their value.
Sebelius did break some new ground in her comments by saying that she thinks a health overhaul should fill the coverage gap in Medicare prescription drug known as the “doughnut hole.”
Congressional Democrats have shied away from talk of filling the gap because of the tens of billions of dollars in expense involved.
On another issue that may raise Republican hackles, Sebelius said she would welcome legislation giving the HHS secretary authority to negotiate the prices of prescription drugs covered by the Medicare program.
“I would look forward to managing that aggressively,” Sebelius said in response to a question by Sen. Bill Nelson , D-Fla. Medicare “overpays” for prescription drugs covered by the program’s Part D drug benefit, she said.
Drama Ending
Sebelius’ confirmation would help bring to a close a painful transition period for the White House in which reporters stopped referring to the president as “No Drama Obama” to describe his administrative skills in favor of a story line emphasizing inept vetting. The nominations of a half-dozen appointees were clouded by reported tax problems, with that of former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (1987-2005) by far causing the administration the greatest embarrassment.
The $7,040 in back taxes and $878 in interest Sebelius said she and her husband paid to correct filing errors pales in comparison to the $140,000 in back taxes paid by Daschle and are viewed by lawmakers as minor errors. Daschle’s withdrawal also occurred after reports that he received tens of thousands of dollars in speaking fees from insurers in the period after he left the Senate.
Those fees raised some concern that Daschle might be too close to industry heading into the health overhaul debate.
Sebelius, on the other hand, won a reputation for taking a firm hand with insurers when, as Kansas insurance commissioner before becoming the state’s governor in 2002, she blocked the purchase of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas by the big Indiana-based insurer Anthem.
“Governor Sebelius has a proven ability to make tough decisions in the face of fierce opposition,” Finance Committee Democrat Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV , D-W.Va., said in a statement released at the hearing.
Sebelius said she acted because of evidence that premiums in the state “would have increased too much.”
But Sebelius lacks Daschle’s close ties to members of Congress that could have aided negotiations on a health overhaul. And her late arrival on the job complicates the challenges the Obama administration faces of achieving a health overhaul this year, one of its top priorities.
Both Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush got their HHS nominations through the Senate considerably faster when they first came to town. Clinton’s appointee, Donna E. Shalala, was confirmed on January 22, 1993, while Bush’s appointee, Tommy G. Thompson, was confirmed February 2, 2001.
But despite the late start, Obama is far ahead of the Clinton White House in getting congressional committees started on a health overhaul. Committees in the Clinton era cooled their heels until late in 1993 awaiting his elaborate overhaul proposal; Obama is letting Congress fill out the details, a process that is already well underway despite the many difficulties it faces resolving differences over financing and the design of a program to expand coverage.
Kathleen Hunter, Drew Armstrong and David Clarke contributed to this story.
Comments
this is aggravating. I've asked a couple dozen of my friends if they have run into trouble from the IRS due to mistakes and not paying the full amounts owed. N ONE of them have! Of course, these are all decent, hard working folks who have integrity, to people who have intentions of living in Washington and running the lives of everyone else. I would much rather have someone with integrity and honor representing me than the clowns now being installed, because at least they will be making honest mistakes rather than calculated greedy plots...
johnnydoughey: Has any of your friends been audited by the IRS? I haven't, but I would expect that if they combed through my 30 years of tax filings, they'd find some issue they disagreed with. The code is just that complicated, and professional tax-preparers often disagree with each other.
then you have a limited number of friends.
Obama has proved himself to be quite inept. Several tax cheats and few proven leaders. Sebelius failed at health care reform and budget management in her own state and will now fail the entire country. My vote for Obama was an utter waste.
In 2004 i had to have open heart surgery, and had complications. I had also prevously taken out insurance to cover my mortgage payments and a loan i had in case of illness or death. I filed my taxes for that year and low and behold was contacted by IRS and told i owed an addtional $7,000 dollars as they considered the insurance payments income, I was by then on social security disabillty which did not mean anything to them they put a lean against my home and threatened my income such as it was and is. I finally got them to agree to a payment plan which they charged me interest at about 21% and also late fees every month. To see these so-called leaders owing thousands for so long and only paying under duress is sickening. the worse of these is Tim Geithner, it is laughable to hear him talk about going after tax cheats. And now we have Sebelius who believes the unborn have no rights up to and including birth is also a tax cheat too? I think you can truly say the inmates are running the asylum.
johnnydoughey's friends are not running for national office. If one is stepping up for a national office, it would be prudent to have someone do an audit of their financials in total being aware that someone will. It doesn't necessarily show dishonesty, but it does show a lack of preparedness. Do we need that right now? I prefer representatives and department heads who have an eye for detail. Having an audit done on oneself is an easy thing to do, particularly since so many other nominees have had the same problem. It is also disturbing that those vetting some of these nominees have missed these tax problems which are simple. What else have they missed? What are the odds that so many nominees would have not paid their taxes in full. In all my years, this is the first time I have seen this many. Why was Daschle ditched and all the others slide?
When Sebelius was Kansas insurance commissioner she decided that there were too many people driving around without car insurance. Her solution was to force changes in the way Kansans get their tags. Now, severeal years after this red tape, there are the same number of drivers in Kansas who do not have insurance. Her success? None. Failing to properly file her income tax return would have meant tax leins and seizures of property and accounts if she were anyone else. I have seen what the IRS does to people and it isn't pretty. I guess if you are rich enough or well connected politically you can just say "Oops" and all is forgiven. The best thing she ever did was resign as governor to take this post. Just as all Americans are better off when 0bama is out of the country, Kansans are better off without her in the state of Kansas. Is it a requirement that you have to cheat on your taxes to get an 0bama appointment??
@CrunchyFrog: But Sebelius is another in a long (really...a long) list of poorly vetted choices by an administration that is showing more evidence daily that they know how to be dishonest. Every choice this administration (and congress) makes from now on needs to be closely examined and criticised by Americans. They have done it to themselves, so let's give them hell and drag them through the mud so that we can have good, honest people in Washington D.C.
crunchyfrog is right-on. I'm not a democrat, I've never voted democrat, but of all of the reasons to attack these people, I don't consider taxes one of them. As far as I'm concerned it's Patriotic duty to keep as much of your hard earned money as you can. I just wish people like this, who are in a position to reduce taxes, and do something about the tax code, would!
"but of all of the reasons to attack these people, I don't consider taxes one of them." Do you mean we can't find people that are qualified that HAVEN'T broke the law? Please! These people SHOULD BE HELD TO HIGHER STANDARDS and if they have broken the law, THEY SHOULD BE DISQUALIFIED!!!
I personally find the tax issues regarding Sebelius to be far less offensive than the fact that she has personally aligned herself with a baby-killing butcher like abortionist George Tiller, threw a reception in his 'honor' at the governor's mansion for gawdsakes, and even more offensive is the fact that two allegedly pro-life, anti-abortion Senators like Brownback and Roberts have chosen to do what is expedient and actually support this pro-death nominee, instead of standing up for the rights of the unborn and saying "we cannot support Governor Sebelius due to her extremist pro-abortion views, and being a friend of abortionists, instead of defending the lives of the most innocent and vulnerable among us, the lives of the unborn". But *that* would require a spine, and a conscience to step up and actually do the right thing, right Senator Hypo, right Senator Crite?
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