Obama to Recess Appoint the Death Panel Chief

Looks like Obama's found the guy to head up the Obamacare death panels, but because he can't get him confirmed he's going to use a recess appointment (From The Corner):

As Ramesh notes, President Obama will bypass the Senate's advice and consent and use a recess appointment to install Harvard's Donald Berwick — a self-avowed admirer of Britain's National Health Service — as head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
The White House blamed Republicans for the maneuver:

"Many Republicans in Congress have made it clear in recent weeks that they were going to stall the nomination as long as they could, solely to score political points," White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer wrote Tuesday on the White House blog.
"With the agency facing new responsibilities to protect seniors' care under the Affordable Care Act, there's no time to waste with Washington game-playing. That's why tomorrow the president will use a recess appointment to put Dr. Berwick at the agency's helm and provide strong leadership for the Medicare program without delay."

Meanwhile, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell called the appointment "outrageous:"

“As if shoving a trillion dollar government takeover of health care down the throat of a disapproving American public wasn't enough, apparently the Obama Administration intends to arrogantly circumvent the American people yet again by recess appointing one of the most prominent advocates of rationed health care to implement their national plan.

“Democrats haven't scheduled so much as a committee hearing for Donald Berwick but the mere possibility of allowing the American people the opportunity to hear what he intends to do with their health care is evidently reason enough for this Administration to sneak him through without public scrutiny.

“Just over three months after passage of this misguided law, with Americans' worst fears about it being realized every day, the fact that this Administration won't allow the man charged with implementing the President's plan to cut $500 billion out of Medicare to testify about his plans for the care of our nation's seniors is truly outrageous.”

The appointment is only good through January, at which point a new Congress will have been sworn in.

More thoughts on Berwick from Ace of Spades:

Continuing his pattern of bypassing Congress when he can't get his way, President Obama recess-appointed Donald Berwick to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services this morning.

What makes this so egregious is that the Empty One didn't even wait for the Senate to reject Berwick. They hadn't even scheduled a hearing yet because Berwick never bothered to fill out the questionnaire sent to him.

Obama knew that Berwick would have an uphill battle to win confirmation. He's an inexperienced, wide-eyed socialist who talks fondly of the "romantic" British health system and the "humane" need to make wealth redistribution an inextricable part of a national healthcare system.

Hope. Change.