White House Sets Agenda for APIs
But president withholds formalization of Bill Lann Lee
By Jason Ma

Using President Clinton’s last State of the Union address as another chance to reach out to Asian Americans, the White House held a conference call to outline the president’s list of priorities, including the more pressing issue of civil rights.

Deputy Director for Domestic Policy Eric Liu led the conference call with reporters from Asian American publications nationwide last Wednesday, pointing out what the president is concentrating on during the upcoming year.

“We’ve got to do all we can to open more doors to more people, and to do all we can to encourage folks who want to make the most of their lives to take responsibility for their lives, and that’s a philosophical thread that’s woven throughout his policy agenda...certainly not least of which is his civil rights agenda,” said Liu, who, as one of four high-ranking APIs in the White House, is responsible for coordinating domestic policy.

Liu, also a former speech writer for the National Security Council, laid out points of “unfinished business” the administration will address, including passing the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, raising the minimum wage, passing a Patients’ Bill of Rights, and implementing a “very ambitious, domestic agenda” that covers education, health care, poverty and civil rights.

Liu singled out civil rights as having particular importance, noting that Clinton will ask for more than $700 million in his upcoming budget proposal for civil rights enforcement. Those funds, Liu said, would be distributed among the Department of Justice, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Labor, in addition to others, in order to “clear away the backlog more quickly, but really expand the scope of investigations and prosecutions” of civil rights violations.”

And noting the killing of Filipino American postal worker Joseph Ileto last summer, Liu said the issue of hate crimes is going to be an urgent one for the president in 2000, including passage of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which a Congressional committee dropped from this year’s budget.

But along with the issue of civil rights enforcement, Liu addressed criticism of the president for not issuing a winter recess appointment that would have removed the “acting” from Bill Lann Lee’s title of assistant attorney general for civil rights.

Although initially appointed in 1997, Lee’s confirmation by the Senate has been held up, primarily by Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee who are responsible for confirmations.

The president could have gotten around a Senate confirmation last month, according to Albert Chung of the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium. With a recess appointment, he said, Lee would have been allowed to serve in a formalized capacity for the remainder of the Congressional term.

“We were very angry because we think that Bill deserves [the recess appointment],” stated Legal Consortium Executive Director Karen Narasaki. “We think he’s done an excellent job.” She added that as long as Lee is an acting attorney general, he will not be listed officially in government records as having held the position.

“It would be like as if he hadn’t been there.”

Liu explained that while Clinton approves of the job that Lee has done, making a winter recess appointment would have threatened Congressional passage of the administration’s other civil rights priorities, especially the confirmation of federal judges that Clinton has named.

“It comes down to a question of not just what a possible next move would have been, but what the possible countermoves would have been,” he said. “We would be quite certain that the Republicans in the Senate would have come back this week with an awful vengeance and see that as throwing down the gauntlet.

“We’ve not given up; we want to continue to find opportunities if we can to assure that he is fully installed in his position,” Liu added. “In our view, the way to signal our commitment to this cause of civil rights is not only to begin with continuing to push the cause of Bill Lann Lee, but also the budget. The dollars we put behind these words are substantial.”

Narasaki rejected that assessment, however, saying that those in the Senate who have withheld confirmation of federal judges would have done so with or without a recess appointment of Lee.

“They’re holding [the judges] hostage anyway,” she said. “We’re not convinced that being reasonable with those in the Republican Party will get you anything. The administration backing down like that was somewhat cowardly.”

Narasaki added that at least seven other civil rights organizations, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, supported a recess appointment for Lee.

Although Clinton could have made a recess appointment last year, Narasaki noted, her organization and others were still pushing for an official confirmation at that time. However, they had eventually given up hope for such a prospect, she said.

Liu also raised immigration as a priority issue for the White House this year, saying that the president will continue to work toward the restoration of benefits for legal immigrants. He added that the Clinton administration would try to triple the current funding for an existing program that combines English-as-a-second-language classes with education in civics.

However, Liu could not say whether the administration would try to restore benefits to legal immigrants to their pre-1996 levels, when the government added limits on the length of eligibility for welfare and Medicare.

“I don’t want to give away what we’re going to be talking about,” he said. “He’s going to call on Congress to restore benefits and he’s going to do all he can in his executive and regulatory power to expand the restoration, because he felt that from the beginning that was part of the bargain for meaningful welfare reform.”