The U.S. Senate ties up loose ends

Posted on | January 5, 2012 | Comments Off

One of the things I couldn’t tell you about when it happened has to do with my friend, Dr. Winslow Sargeant (who is not Kellen Winslow and has never played for the San Diego Chargers), Chief Counsel of the SBA Office of Advocacy.

The sad saga of Dr. Sargeant’s nomination to the Chief Counsel spot and the small minded Senate politics with which that nomination was greeted, the resulting standoff and delay, and President Obama’s final decision to resort to a recess appointment in order to get him installed have been pretty thoroughly hashed out in previous posts here at The Journal Blog and at the Microbusiness News Briefs.

I thought the story was over … until I received a certain press communication from the SBA in November.

The release essentially said that the Senate had finally confirmed Dr. Sargeant’s nomination to Chief Counsel of the SBA Office of Advocacy. After sitting in the Chief Counsel chair for sixteen months, doing the job and doing it well, the Senate finally decided to make it official.

Better late than never, I suppose.

From a practical point of view, none of this matters, of course. The nation’s small and microbusinesses have been benefiting from Dr. Sargeant’s championship for all this time anyway, such that we all managed to successfully forget that he hadn’t been confirmed by the Senate yet. I don’t know that this official blessing of what he’s been doing all along will make all that much of a difference on a day-to-day basis.

We won’t tell those Senators about that, though. It might make the cry.

It is my earnest hope to be able to persuade Dr. Sargeant to join me for a Microbusiness Conversation sometime this month. We probably won’t talk much about the Senate (I don’t want to get him in trouble), but we probably will be talking about what he’s been doing all this time without Senate approval. I hope you’ll be able to listen in.

Meanwhile, if there is anything to be learned from this entire tale, is is this: if you’re going to pay attention to what goes on in Washington, first develop a sense of humor.

Otherwise, you’ll end up with an ulcer.


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