GOP senators target two Obama nominees

Partisan lines have formed around President-elect Obama’s two most embattled Cabinet picks, with Eric Holder and Tim Geithner facing increasing criticism from Republicans.

Democrats, who have not shied away from attacking Obama’s economic team on specific policy points, have nonetheless jumped to the defense of Geithner, Obama’s designated Treasury secretary, and Holder, his nominee for attorney general.

{mosads}Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who has an independent streak and has sided from time to time with Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, said she planned to vote for Holder despite Republican criticisms of his record as deputy attorney general during the Clinton administration.

Democrats have also banded around Geithner, who has come under fire for failing to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes between 2001 and 2004, when he was classified as self-employed while working for the International Monetary Fund.

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Banking Committee, said that Geithner’s unpaid taxes might have been more damaging had his nomination come against the backdrop of a robust economy.

“My guess is that people want to know that people are working on their problems, on jobs and homes,” Dodd said. “If you’re trying to make more of this than the problems people are grappling with, I don’t think it will be appreciated except by a core constituency that doesn’t like him anyway.”

Democrats have delayed Geithner’s confirmation hearing until Jan. 21 because of Republican objections to holding it Thursday, as originally scheduled.

But Geithner still has the support of senior Democrats such as Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), both of whom predicted he would be confirmed.

And late Wednesday, Sens. John Thune (S.D.), vice chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, and Orrin Hatch (Utah), the second-ranking Republican on the Finance Committee, indicated that Geithner’s situation was not as dire as some Republicans had indicated.

“It certainly hasn’t derailed him,” Thune said.

Geithner has paid nearly $43,000 in back-taxes and interest.

However, some Republicans said the tax issue raised significant concerns.

“I think it’s a very serious issue — the man who wants to be the top tax collector in America hasn’t paid his taxes,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who noted that Geithner would have authority over the IRS.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), the chairman of the Senate Republican Steering Committee, said he would probably vote against Geithner’s confirmation.

Republicans have said for weeks they intend to grill Holder, and succeeded in delaying his confirmation hearing by one week. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) had initially scheduled the hearing for Jan. 8, but relented to GOP criticism.

Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), the committee’s ranking Republican, criticized Holder on the Senate floor last week in a lengthy speech and reiterated his concerns in several subsequent television interviews.

{mospagebreak}Republicans have seized on Holder’s role in green-lighting the pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich.

They have also blasted his role in President Clinton’s decision to pardon 16 members of the FALN, a Puerto Rican nationalist organization accused of a string of bombings in the late ’70s and early ’80s.

Republicans have also criticized Holder’s role in former Attorney General Janet Reno’s decision to reject an FBI request to appoint an independent counsel to investigate alleged fundraising abuses by former Vice President Al Gore.

{mosads}“There is a critical qualification of character in upholding principles when tempted to yield to expediency by being a ‘yes man’ to please a superior or to accommodate a friend,” Specter said of Holder.

The Republicans’ choice of witnesses for the confirmation hearing scheduled Thursday in front of the Judiciary panel shows they are readying for a fight.

Republicans have invited Joseph Connor, whose father was killed in a FALN attack, as well as Richard Hahn, a former FBI agent who investigated the group.

Republicans have also requested hundreds of pages’ worth of documents that might shed light on Holder’s role in the Elian Gonzalez controversy. The Justice Department created an uproar in the Cuban-American community eight years ago when it returned Gonzalez, a young shipwreck survivor, to his father in Cuba.

But the GOP has not been able to maintain the same unified front as Democrats. Their efforts to raise serious concerns about Geithner and Holder have been undermined by Hatch, who is also the second-ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee.

Hatch said he would vote for Holder as well as voice support for Geithner.

“I start with the premise that the president deserves the benefit of the doubt. I don’t think politics should be played with the attorney general,” Hatch told The Hill on Sunday. “I like Barack Obama and want to help him if I can.”

Sessions, a member of the Judiciary Committee, did not sign a letter endorsed by eight other Republicans on Judiciary requesting information on Holder from the Clinton Presidential Library.

This prompted speculation that Sessions might emerge as a supporter of Holder.

But Sessions said Wednesday that he did not sign the letter because his colleagues asked for 10 categories of documents and he did not have time to evaluate whether such a broad request was justified.