Post reports GOP criticism of HHS vacancy, but not GOP's role

An April 28 Washington Post article on "the growing swine flu crisis" reported that President Obama "has yet to fill 15 top positions at the health department or name a full-time director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and five more nominations -- including that of former [sic] Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to be HHS Secretary -- are waiting to be confirmed by the Senate." The article, by staff writers Michael D. Shear and Spencer S. Hsu, quoted Bush Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt saying, "Without a Secretary of HHS, this will begin to be managed in ways that will be inconsistent with its nature." However, while allowing Leavitt to criticize the Obama administration for not having an HHS secretary in place, Shear and Hsu did not note that Republican senators have delayed a vote on Sebelius' nomination.

As Media Matters for America has noted, Sebelius is "waiting to be confirmed by the Senate" because Republican senators objected to a unanimous consent request by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) that sought to have a vote on her nomination on April 23. In an article that day noting that Republicans had blocked a vote on Sebelius, the Associated Press reported: "The head of the Republican Party called on President Barack Obama to withdraw Kathleen Sebelius' nomination as health secretary unless she answers more questions on abortion." A Senate vote is currently scheduled for April 28, with 60 votes needed for confirmation.

From the April 28 Washington Post article:

As they confront the growing swine flu crisis, President Obama's administration is attempting to implement a never-before-tested pandemic response plan while dozens of key public health and emergency response jobs in the administration remain vacant.

The president has yet to fill 15 top positions at the health department or name a full-time director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and five more nominations -- including that of former Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to be HHS Secretary -- are waiting to be confirmed by the Senate, officials at the department said.

[...]

"Having the top 20 unfilled is a significant problem for the long term," said Michael Leavitt, the HHS Secretary under President Bush. He praised the work of the civil servants, but said the Obama administration "needs to give this priority. Vetted people need to be sent to the Senate. And the Senate needs to respond."

An immediate pandemic outbreak would pose immense challenges to a presidential team operating without much experience and without a long-standing plan. A National Pandemic Strategy and Implementation Plan was developed in 2005 and 2006, but has never been fully tested.

In some ways, such a scenario would combine the test posed by the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, which occurred eight months into the administration of former president George W. Bush at a time when many key Justice Department and intelligence positions were vacant, and Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, which struck just one year after a national response plan was overhauled.

"The fact is it didn't measure up," former Bush homeland security advisor Frances Fragos Townsend said in a Feb. 2006 review of the Katrina response, saying the confusing and overly bureaucratic National Response Plan "came up short."

Leavitt, who led the government's development of the pandemic plan following an avian flu outbreak in 2005, said the crisis needs to be managed at the federal level by health professionals, not homeland security officials.

"Without a Secretary of HHS, this will begin to be managed in ways that will be inconsistent with its nature," he warned in an interview Monday. "If you were managing this out of Commerce, it would all be about trade. If it were Treasury, it would all be about the flow of money."

White House officials dismissed questions Monday about the team confronting the potential pandemic. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters that he is confident that the administration is ready to handle the crisis.

"Our response is in no way hindered or hampered by not having a permanent secretary at HHS right now," Gibbs said. "Dr. Besser and thousands of people both at CDC and throughout HHS are responding to this ... We feel confident with the team that is there now."