One of the people receiving a recess appointment is Craig Becker to serve on the National Labor Relations Board, which protects workers from unfair labor practices. As Psaki explained, although the “five member board has been trying to operate with only two members,” Becker has “been waiting for 261 days or over 8 months” to be confirmed.

Becker, who has spent much of his distinguished career as a lawyer for the AFL-CIO and SEIU, has been one of the GOP’s top targets. Republicans have been using his nomination as a proxy battle for the Employee Free Choice Act. As The Wonk Room’s Pat Garofalo has explained, they seem to believe that “Becker will somehow institute EFCA all by himself, which is, of course, nonsense.” Read on...

Transcript below the fold via CBS.

SCHIEFFER: You know one of the things the President said when you all said that we're going to continue to oppose this, he said bring it on. That he-- he was ready for the fight. And I suppose one of the ways he is doing that is he announced last night that he is going to what they call recess appoint fifteen nominees for government jobs that have been appointments that are being held up in the Senate. He's going to appoint them during this recess. And for people who don't quite understand what that means, what it means is they can go to work, fill out those positions, and continue to work in those positions until the next Congress is seated next year.

DEMINT: Right.

SCHIEFFER: What's your response to that?

DEMINT: Well, Bob, the President is mocking Americans who continue to be against this bill. And he said bring it on. And that's what we intend to do. Now, his recess appointments belie the fact that hundreds of his nominations have been confirmed unanimously by the Senate. But he has had mixed in with thes-- these batch of nominations some pretty radical folks. Craig Becker, who was in the group that he appointed by executive fiat yesterday, is someone who has worked for unions his entire career. And he put him on a board that's supposed to be unbiased arbitrators between businesses and unions. Democrats opposed this nomination. So there's bipartisan opp-- opposition. And all we had asked for is some debate and a vote on this nominee. He decided to circumvent Congress again, which has become his style on so many issues, and just appoint him while we were out of town.