The chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., offered praise recently for a set of White House recommendations to streamline the Senate nominations process for executive branch personnel.
Recommendations include reducing duplications in paperwork as well as implementing an online form for nominees to complete the bulk of the tedious information collection involved. A bipartisan working group that was called for in the nominations reform bill adopted the recommendations unanimously.
"The nominations streamlining bill signed into law three months ago, which called for the working group study, will free up the Senate to concentrate on nominees for the most important offices, while the working group recommendations will free up nominees to concentrate on the issues rather than filling out paperwork," Lieberman said.
The report calls on Senate committees to adopt a core questionnaire, eliminate irrelevant questions such as one in regard to net worth, and to implement the recommendations prior to the new Congress beginning in January.
