Poll: Most Voters Do Not Think Obama Administration Is Competent | SCOTUS Hears Case On Preserving Congress’ Congressional Role
Today In Washington, D.C. - Jan. 13, 2014 The Senate will reconvene at 2 PM today and resume consideration of S. 1845, the unemployment insurance bill.
At 5:30, the Senate will vote on confirmation of Robert Wilkins to be a judge on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. Wilkins is the 3rd of three judges Democrats are using to pack the DC Circuit Court and Reid used the nuclear option to ensure his confirmation.
Following the Wilkins vote, the Senate will vote on cloture (cutting off debate and amendments) on the Reed substitute to S. 1845. If cloture is not invoked, the Senate will then vote on cloture on the underlying bill.
The House reconvened at Noon. The Speaker has scheduled the following bills for consideration:
H.R. 1513 — Revising and limiting the boundaries which property may be acquired in Gettysburg National Military Park
S. 230 — Authorizing the Peace Corps Commemorative Foundation to establish a commemorative work in the District of Columbia and its environs
H.R. 841 — Making technical corrections to the Grand Ronde Reservation Act
This week, Congress is expected to unveil a $1.012 trillion omnibus spending bill for FY 2014. This massive piece of legislation will include all 12 appropriation bills and thousands of pages of material, but the public may only have a few days to review its contents. The funding reflects an overall spending level approved in December and is a $26 billion increase from FY 2013. A spending bill must be passed by both houses and signed by the President by January 15 in order to avert another government shutdown.
This $1.012 trillion bill is bad policy because it represents a large spending increase. It’s bad procedure because omnibus bills are not transparent and regularly fraught with waste. It is bad politics because the American people deserve an open process that allows Congress ample time to understand, debate, and amend legislation that costs so much of their hard-earned tax dollars.
Today, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a crucial case about the checks and balances between branches of the government under the Constitution. The case, National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, stems from unconstitutional “recess” appointments made by President Obama in January 2012. Obama appointed two members to the NLRB and Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But the Senate was not in recess at the time; it was holding a series of pro forma sessions, and even conducted legislative business during one, approving a bill by unanimous consent. These pro forma sessions had been previously used by Democrats to prevent President George W. Bush from making recess appointments, but in making these appointments, President Obama essentially decided he now gets to determine whether the Senate is in recess for the purposes of making such appointments. Such a precedent would be an outrageous breach of the Constitution’s carefully separated powers between the executive and legislative branches.
McClatchy notes, “Underscoring the stakes, 45 Republican senators led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky have been allotted additional time during the 90-minute oral argument. Senators ‘have a powerful stake in ensuring that the executive’s claim of power to make appointments unilaterally, which the (Constitution’s) framers deliberately withheld, is repudiated,’ attorney Miguel Estrada wrote in a brief on behalf of the GOP senators. . . . Senate Republicans have joined Noel Canning in challenging the appointments’ legitimacy. So have South Carolina and 16 other right-to-work states, where conservative officials are unhappy with some NLRB decisions. If the challengers win, any NLRB decisions made by Block and Flynn would be cast into doubt. . . . A Noel Canning win also could undercut actions taken at the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by Richard Cordray, who was initially given a recess appointment to head the agency many Republicans oppose.”
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell attended the oral arguments today. He has been involved in this issue from the beginning. The day of the appointments, he blasted them, saying, “Although the Senate is not in recess, President Obama, in an unprecedented move, has arrogantly circumvented the American people by 'recess' appointing Richard Cordray as director of the new CFPB. This recess appointment represents a sharp departure from a long-standing precedent . . . Breaking from this precedent lands this appointee in uncertain legal territory, threatens the confirmation process and fundamentally endangers the Congress’s role in providing a check on the excesses of the executive branch.” After the president continued this practice by appointing members of the NLRB, McConnell said, “Just hours after he circumvented the American people by 'recess' appointing Richard Cordray to the CFPB, the President has upped the ante by making several additional recess appointments, this time to the NLRB. Although all of these appointments potentially raise legal and constitutional questions, the NLRB appointments are particularly egregious. . . . Congress has a constitutional duty to examine presidential nominees, a responsibility that serves as a check on executive power. But what the President did today sets a terrible precedent that could allow any future President to completely cut the Senate out of the confirmation process, appointing his nominees immediately after sending their names up to Congress. This was surely not what the framers had in mind when they required the President to seek the advice and consent of the Senate in making appointments.”
Leader McConnell later joined with 44 other Senate Republicans to retain Miguel Estrada, a well-respected conservative litigator, (whose nomination as a judge Senate Democrats repeatedly filibustered) as counsel in the case over the recess appointments. A year ago, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that Obama’s appointments were unconstitutional. The appeals court ruled, “An interpretation of ‘the Recess’ that permits the President to decide when the Senate is in recess would demolish the checks and balances inherent in the advice-and-consent requirement, giving the President free rein to appoint his desired nominees at any time he pleases, whether that time be a weekend, lunch, or even when the Senate is in session and he is merely displeased with its inaction. This cannot be the law.”
As the case made its way to the Supreme Court, Estrada filed an amicus brief to the high court on behalf of Leader McConnell and Republican senators. They argued to the Court, “The Executive, at bottom, seeks nothing less than the very unilateral appointments authority that the Framers deliberately withheld. And its position would combine the powers that they strove to separate. The Court should not countenance such encroachment on the ‘great security’ against ‘concentration of ... powers’ so ‘essential to the preservation of liberty.’ (The Federalist No. 51, at 318.) It should repudiate the Executive’s overreaching and reaffirm the continuing vitality of the constitutional structure.”
As Leader McConnell said in November, “Last year, the President made an unprecedented power grab by placing political allies at a powerful federal agency while the Senate was meeting regularly and without even trying to obtain its advice and consent. The President was dismissive of the Constitution’s constraints on his power, saying he would ‘refuse to take no for an answer.’ Three federal appeals courts have rejected this and similar abuses of power. They have reaffirmed what Republicans and job creators around the country have been saying: the President’s attempt to circumvent the Senate with supposed ‘recess appointments’ to the NLRB was unconstitutional. It will now be up to the Supreme Court to decide whether the President’s recess appointments violated the Constitution, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and two other federal appeals courts have found.”
Tags: Incompetence, Obama administration, poll, SCOTUS, Congress To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Posted by Bill Smith at 12:41 PM - Post Link
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home