Nominees for Energy, Budget Posts OKd

The Senate voted Friday to fill vacancies in two top Clinton administration posts, confirming the nominations of Bill Richardson as Energy secretary and Jack Lew as budget director.

Both were confirmed by voice vote amid a cluster of lesser nominations and other votes before the Senate adjourned for its August recess. The House is scheduled to leave in a week.

Richardson, 50, the former ambassador to the United Nations and a former congressman from New Mexico, was nominated by President Clinton in June. He replaces Federico Pena and becomes the administration’s highest-ranking Latino.

Allegations that Clinton had an affair with former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky had found their way into Richardson’s nomination.

While at the U.N., he offered Lewinsky a job as a $30,000-a-year public relations aide. Richardson said he was asked to consider her by John D. Podesta, deputy White House chief of staff.

During Richardson’s confirmation hearing last week, Republicans said they were surprised that the ambassador would participate in her job interview. Richardson replied that he typically interviewed candidates for political jobs.

Richardson in a statement thanked the senators for the quick confirmation. He is not expected to take over as Energy secretary until mid-August or later.

“I will take a long-delayed vacation with my family,” Richardson said.

He said one of his first priorities at the department will be to convene a summit of local and state officials, environmental and business groups, public health officials and others to discuss the cleanup of nuclear weapons sites.

The nomination of Lew, 42, to head the White House Office of Management and Budget was less eventful.

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Clinton selected the New Yorker in April after then-Director Franklin D. Raines announced that he was leaving to head Fannie Mae, the home mortgage company.

Lew had been deputy budget chief, a White House domestic policy aide and spent 14 years working on the staffs of congressional Democrats.

In other actions, the Senate voted to make identity theft a federal crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

The bill approved late Thursday would punish people who steal other people’s personal identification to open fraudulent bank accounts, secure loans or apply for credit cards.

Thefts committed to facilitate terrorism or in connection with a violent crime would be subject to 25 years in prison.

The bill also would make the Federal Trade Commission a clearinghouse for reporting identity-theft crimes.

Youths who use fake identification to buy alcohol would be exempt.

A similar bill was introduced in the House.

Meanwhile, the House on Friday followed the Senate in passing a job-training bill that consolidates dozens of programs and gives states and local governments more flexibility in designing them.

The Senate passed the bill Thursday night, and President Clinton said he will sign it into law.

In the House, congressional officials said Republicans have sidetracked legislation to curtail teen smoking at least until September, amid debate over whether to abandon the measure entirely.

As recently as two weeks ago, Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) told reporters an anti-smoking bill would be passed by the time lawmakers recess Aug. 5.

But officials said an increasing number of Republicans had become convinced that the issue had effectively died in the Senate earlier this year and that it was rapidly diminishing as an election-year concern among voters.

Democrats seized on the development as evidence that Republicans are beholden to the tobacco industry, which has donated millions to GOP campaigns in recent years. Gingrich spokeswoman Christina Martin said the GOP leadership will “revisit the issue when we return” in September.