Senate vote on GSA administrator slated for today

Eight months after a Senate committee unanimously voted to advance the nomination of Martha Johnson as administrator of the General Services Administration, that nomination today is scheduled to come before the full Senate.

Last June 8, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee voted unanimously to confirm Johnson, who was nominated April 3, 2009, by President Barack Obama. But before a vote on her confirmation could be taken, Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond (R-Mo.) placed a hold on her nomination.

“Here it is February the year following; we now are going to get to vote on this nomination that passed the committee unanimously,” Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) said in a Senate session Feb. 3. “But not until we shut off a filibuster and then have 30 hours post-cloture. It is the most unbelievable thing in the world.”

Johnson’s is not the only confirmation being held up by Republican filibusters, Dorgan said. Seven Treasury Department nominations also await Senate vote while “we are in the deepest depression since the 1930s,” he said.

“At a time when we most need cooperation, we get almost none,” Dorgan said.

The Senate is scheduled to convene at noon, then go to executive session to consider the nomination of Patricia Smith as solicitor for the Labor Department.

Any discussion of Johnson’s confirmation will come some time after.