Proving that the intragovernmental bitterness is not fading with the end of Mr. Bush’s presidency, Jim Manley, a spokesman for Mr. Reid, said Mr. Bush had only himself to blame for Mr. Reid’s maneuver. “The only reason why we got into this situation was because of the complete unwillingness of the president to treat Congress as a co-equal branch of government,” he said.

Tony Fratto, a spokesman for Mr. Bush, said the president might have been inclined to make outgoing recess appointments were it not for Mr. Reid’s legislative blockade.

“Given the fact that the Senate was so intransigent on so many nominations, we certainly would have liked to have used the option of recess appointments,” Mr. Fratto said. “This process is broken, absolutely broken. The majority leader has taken it to the point of abuse.”

But there are some areas of cooperation that would preclude the need for recess appointments. Democratic leaders support the confirmation of Mr. Bush’s choice as the inspector general overseeing the allocation of money for the economic bailout plan, Neil M. Barofsky, a federal prosecutor from New York.

And a deal is in the works to confirm the four people Mr. Bush reappointed for six-year terms on the board of the Inter-American Foundation, which makes grants to businesses and organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean. Among them is Roger W. Wallace, a supporter and major fund-raiser for Mr. Bush.

There are also appointments that require no Congressional approval but have terms that run for years. None of those have created much of a stir, either.

Mr. Bush nominated six people for four-year terms on the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, which is charged with scientifically evaluating Department of Energy plans to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada  a plan Mr. Bush has supported and Mr. Obama has opposed. But the board’s members, while appointed by the president, are recommended by the National Academy of Sciences, and their recommendations are not binding. (If anybody was going to raise a flag on the appointments it would have been Mr. Reid, who represents Nevada and passionately opposes the Yucca plan; his office said it had no complaints on the matter.)