The Senate has approved President George W. Bush's nomination of John Snow to be the nation's 73rd treasury secretary after the railroad executive gave assurances to two Democratic senators that he will review a controversial Treasury proposal on pensions.
The approval of Snow's nomination came by voice vote late Thursday night in an empty Senate chamber after many senators had already left the Capitol to begin a three-day weekend.
The Bush administration had pushed for the late-night vote in order to have Snow on the job Monday morning when the president will submit his new budget to Congress.
Snow, the head of railroad giant CSX Corp for the past 14 years, was picked by Bush last month to replace Paul O'Neill after the president decided to shake up his economic team in an effort to find more effective salesmen for his new US$674 billion economic stimulus package.
In a statement, the president praised the Senate's action, saying Snow would ``work with me to strengthen economic growth and create jobs so that everyone who seeks work can find work.''
The vote on the nomination was delayed until after Snow could hold a late afternoon meeting with Sens. Tom Harkin and Dick Durbin over the issue of a Treasury rule governing so-called ``cash benefit'' pensions, which many companies are moving to adopt as a cost-saving measure in place of defined-benefit pension plans.
The two want the government to implement a rule that would prohibit companies from forcing workers out of so-called defined benefit plans into "cash balance" pension plans.
Opponents contend that forcing workers to convert to the new plans violates federal age discrimination laws, the Treasury Department late last year issued proposed regulations that would state specifically that such conversions are not discriminatory.
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