You have it right. It was discussed in this thread, which got derailed (masterfully, by Bricker) into a debate about filibusters. But what Senate Republicans were doing wasn’t actually a filibuster, as the legislation in question had already been passed. Given their desire not to allow any appointment to the agency, no matter who was nominated, what they were attempting was nullification.
IIRC, the CPA was created while Obama briefly had an occasionally-filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.
That said, you could just as well argue that the time to argue against prohibition was in 1920.
ETA: beaten to punch.
Yes, that is exactly what I said. Every word. In fact, I went back in time and changed my post and replaced what I did post with your eloquent diatribe. :rolleyes:
So now that we’re clear on that, do something about it 
I’m actually quite surprised that Reid grew some balls to do that. Looks like the Bush administration didn’t bother to try to recess appoint him into the position, probably figuring that an AAG position wasn’t meaningful enough to force the issue. I see he still served as his previous position in the Office of Legal Counsel until the end of the Bush administration though
I would argue that keeping the Senate in perpetual session is a tactic to destroy the power of recess appointments. After all, if the Senate is always in session, then there can never be a recess appointment. It was just an indirect way of preventing the exercise of presidential power
I’m quite happy that he has found some new ground to dick the Republicans using the types of tricks they usually use to run roughshod over the Democrats.
Poorly worded. When I finished writing that, I thought it was incendiary, but I remembered that I was in the Pit so I left it.
Given the stance of Republicans and consumers, I have absolutely no faith that they were simply worried about cost and efficiency. They’re pissed that Dodd-Frank passed and want to block it and this is how they plan on doing it.
I don’t mind being wrong if that meant Democrats in the past had more balls to stand up to Republican bullshit. But it looks like both the pro forma tactic and the sidestepping of that has happened in the past so I’m really unconcerned that Obama is doing it or that the Democrats did it. Both parties have ignored the declaration when they’ve seen fit to do so and I expect it to continue. Only apparently with Reid, it was actually successful in blocking the Bradbury nomination.
Seems that Obama was more or less Constitutionally required to appoint someone to head the CFPB by whatever means legally feasible.
There’s that part (Article II, Section 2, for those keeping score at home) where he’s charged with ensuring that the laws be faithfully executed, and the GOP Senators, by blocking the appointment of anyone to head that agency, were preventing the laws from being executed, faithfully or otherwise.
It seems he also went ahead and appointed 3 members to the NLRB.
BTW, Cordray, because he was recess-appointed and not confirmed, won’t have any powers, according to Dodd-Frank law:
However, one question a judge could need to answer is whether Cordray will actually be able to assume those powers since he has been recess-appointed. The text of the Dodd-Frank law states that those powers will not take effect until the CFPB director “is confirmed by the Senate.”
Vacation has nothing to do with it. As I understand it, as per the Constitution, one congressional session must end and another one begin. As soon as the one ends, theoretically the session is in recess, even for just a minute or two.
That technicality aside, the working rule (as per Reid and Senator Obama) is that congress must be out of session for three days for the President to justify a recess appointment. Obama just decided to ignore this. THAT is what the outrage is about.
IMO, regardless of who is in power, process matters. Hell, the Senate and The House are filled with process. You need it in place so whomever is in power cannot run roughshod. Bad move on Obama’s part, regardless if the appointment is a horrible one or a fantastic one.
I don’t think that any President has forced a recess appointment before the time that the Senate has to be out of session for the recess appointment to be justified, which has been three days. Do you have a cite to the contrary?
That’s a bad argument, as it means that any President can just appoint whoever he wants pretty much anytime. Obama stated that he was not going to accept “no”. But that’s too bad. Congress and the Presidency are co-equal. To address your concern, he would be forced to find an acceptable nominee, not shove one through the way he did.
There’s a bit more nuance than “shove it through”, as others have pointed out. The law creating the agency was passed by Congress. The nominee got the majority of votes in the Senate, but now that we are playing Calvin Coolidgeball, the rules have changed, and a filibuster-proof approval is now required. So its not as if Barry overrode the will of the people by sheer force.
Be wary when you invoke the name of the Thread Ninja Assassin.
YogSosoth obviously isn’t interested in hearing any sort of reasonable discussion on this matter. The simple truth is that recess appointments are a function of the 18th century’s transportation infrastructure. In 1789 it was envisioned that Congress would have two sessions, and long breaks in between. During these breaks the Congressmen would travel back to their homes and live among their constituents.
A special session to fill vacancies was, simply, impractical. Travel times were significant and the recess appointment power was an essential part of allowing government to function when the Congress wasn’t in session.
In the 21st century there is actually no practical reason for there to be a Congressional recess. The only purpose of recess appointments now is they allow a President to appoint people to fill offices when he doesn’t have the appropriate support in the Senate.
The “power of recess appointments” is actually not part of the checks and balances system, it is a relic. Considering both parties have used pro forma sessions to attempt to prevent recess appointments I find it laughable when someone idiotically acts like this is a case of Obama riding in on his white stallion to vanquish the evil Republicans who were on the verge of destroying the long and cherished power of the President to make appointments to high Federal office without legislative approval. That’s ludicrous, and is on the face of it at odds with the history behind the constitution.
To be blunt, several parts of our government do not work the way they were intended any longer, and all parties are abusing these procedural foibles of our system to their personal gain.
The whole issue of the recess appointment should in fact be moot, because the President has enough votes to get Cordray confirmed. The only reason he didn’t was because the Senate has, through excessive use of the filibuster, been turned into a supermajority chamber which is totally at odds with the intentions of the founders. Where the founders felt we needed supermajority votes, they explicitly provided for them. The filibuster is just a consequence of Senate rules and not even in the constitution at all.
Theodore Roosevelt obviously squeaked one in when he appointed some 200 persons to Federal office in the split second between two Congressional sessions, he was taking advantage of a quirk in the system.
Obama is taking advantage of another one, he’s basically saying that since the constitution does not explicitly define what a congressional recess is, he can interpret it how he sees fit. This presents some problems, what if he said congress was always in recess and from here on out Presidents didn’t ever get congressional approval for any appointees to anything? Obviously that wouldn’t happen because of the outrage, but to act as though this is anything other that Obama utilizing the same sort of “politicians tricks” as the other side is laughable.
I’d be willing to support a constitutional amendment to eliminate recess appointments, if it also got rid of the filibuster (and “holds”). I could agree with holds and filibusters surviving in a modified form, in which an individual senator or a minority of the Senate could delay an appointment or a bill for some reasonable time, but then they should have to put up or shut up:
“Mr. Chairman, esteemed members of the Sub-Committee, thank you for giving me the time I needed to complete my investigations. Unfortunately, I must now announce that I have definitive proof that the President’s nominee for the position of Deputy Assistant Undersecretary of Defense for Extraterrestrial Affairs is actually a Cylon agent.”
:shocked cries, chairman bangs his gavel:
“Order! Order!”
Bring a couple of tribbles close to Michelle Bachman, they start squeaking in panic and trying to escape.
I’m not opposed to the upper body being able to hold up legislation due to deliberations. But to me, a filibuster should be a real filibuster. Filibustering these days is basically done via parliamentary procedure that doesn’t require someone to physically hold the floor as was necessary in the past. Even before cloture, filibusters could traditionally be broken simply due to exhaustion and the fact that over enough time, with the Senate’s business shut down the people would demand it ended. Or, sometimes in the dead of night, the party filibustering would get disorganized and accidentally yield the floor. When you’re running in shifts without sleep these things happen. The current filibuster requires no skin to use, which is really what makes it overly used.
If filibusters closed the Senate to all other business and required a consistent holding of the floor as used to be the case, I suspect it wouldn’t be so frequently abused.
I also wouldn’t be opposed to an elimination entirely of the unlimited filibuster and its replacement with a parliamentary procedure in which say, 30 Senators could file vote for a “delay” on holding a vote on a bill, such delay could only be used once per specific piece of legislation and would only be good for 30 days. After which the bill could not be delayed again. I think that would actually encapsulate any “good” that the filibuster served and eliminate the negative aspects of it.
But in the US, it’s historically been parliamentary procedure. The concept of somebody physically holding the floor didn’t really come into play until the early 20th century. Before then, just the threat of a filibuster was usually enough.
And even in the 20th century, it was mostly about theatrics. Technically, during the filibuster of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, you didn’t need to have Senators show up with catheters. It was literally political theater to appease their supporters and create headlines. The actual filibuster was accomplished via those parliamentary procedures.
Physically holding the floor is actually the exception in US history, rather than the rule.
I’m certain that some wingnut will try to use that technicality to prevent Cordray from assuming his powers, but I hope, and predict, that it will amount to nothing but an annoyance.
So…if its a working rule per Reid and Obama, then they can change it if they feel like it, right? As for the process that you so value, what type of process allows 39 Senators to leave the Senate in perpetual session and basically eliminate the presidential power of recess appointments?
No cite, but I’ll be glad if Obama is treading new ground here. Its about time Democrats start using the rules to fight back instead of just reacting to every little obstacle Republicans put up.
You can think what you want. In fact, since this is the Pit, I’ll save you the trouble, since anyone putting that amount of words into my mouth is obviously uninterested in having a discussion. So I’ll just say it right now: No, I don’t want a discussion. I’m glad the Republicans got fucked this time. You don’t like it? Tough shit.
Then maybe they should get rid of it. But since recess appointments still exist, don’t cry if someone you don’t like uses it.
I prefer bear cavalries. Horses are so 19th century
I support the Senate’s authority to block presidential appointments, and think the recess appointment is a dickish end run around the law. However, in this case Senate Republicans are going beyond that authority in two ways. First, they’re not just voting against confirmation, because they’d lose that vote, so they’re blocking the vote altogether. Senate Democrats did the same thing to block Bolton’s appointment, so fair tu quoque there. However, the Senate Republicans are not just blocking the appointee, they’re blocking the whole position. That’s a further corruption of the process and threatens to make it impossible for Congress to get anything done again ever.
It depends. This is taking place in a pretty grey area for starters, the whole thing about when a recess starts, and all that happy horseshit. But the agency was created, legally, fair and square. To refuse to appoint someone to run it is kinda bizarre. Its like, we lost, they won, but they can’t have it anyway, so there!
Nothing cut and dried about the filibuster, either. The filibusters to prevent the advance of civil rights are some of the most disgraceful episodes in our history. But if a filibuster could have prevented our involvement in Viet Nam, or Iraq? Not just “yes”, “HELL! yes!”.
Turns out that Obama requested a debt ceiling increase but "lawmakers asked Obama to delay his request so they would be in session during the 15-day period allowed for objections. "
Obama Delays Request for $1.2T Debt Ceiling Increase | Fox News
So, they were pretending to be “in session” by “gaveling in and out” periodically to block recess appointments, but also claiming to be “out of session” to delay the debt issue.
Obama has to deal with a ridiculous amount of gamesmanship to get anything done at all, so I’m not willing to fault him in the least. They are just mad that he beat them at their own game.