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Jagermeister
01-13-2012, 10:01 AM
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2012-01-04/obama-cordray-recess-authority/52380998/1

This is an interesting story you likely won't see every where yet. The president is allowed under the Constitution to make "recess appointments". Problem is the Senate wasn't actually in a recess. 2 days after the fact the Justice Dept comes out and says ohh it's ok. I'll post that info shortly. Apparently it's serious enough that a law suit may be filed.

WASHINGTON – President Obama defied Republican lawmakers on Wednesday when he bypassed Congress and invoked presidential recess appointment authority to install former Ohio attorney general Richard Cordray to head the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.


Republicans blasted the move by Obama as constitutionally dubious, arguing that the Senate was in "pro forma session" and technically not in recess. Meanwhile, business groups, such as the powerful U.S. Chamber of Commerce, expressed disappointment with the decision and said that Cordray's authority as the consumer watchdog could ultimately be challenged in the courts.For his part, Obama charged Republicans with foot-dragging on Cordray's appointment of the agency tasked with oversight of non-bank financial companies.

The president announced his nomination last summer and pushed Republicans to give Cordray an up or down vote. Although Cordray had the support of Republican and Democratic attorneys general across the country, Senate Republicans blocked a vote on the nomination because of larger concerns about the lack of congressional oversight of the agency.

Read all The Oval posts "When Congress refuses to act and as a result hurts our economy and puts people at risk, I have an obligation as president to do what I can without them," Obama said in a speech in Shaker Heights, Ohio. "I have an obligation to act on behalf of the American people."

The White House also announced that Obama made three recess appointments to fill vacant seats on the National Labor Relations Board. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell noted Obama announced the nomination of two of the NLRB appointees — Sharon Block and Richard Griffin— two days before the Senate was scheduled to adjourn last month. The White House says Obama has made 28 recess appointments, compared with 61 made by President George W. Bush at the same point in his first term, and the NLRB appointments were necessary for the board to reach a quorum.

"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," said McConnell, who also questioned the legality of the appointments. "This was surely not what the framers had in mind when they required the president to seek the advice and consent of the Senate."

Sarah Binder, a governance expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said that the Constitution doesn't define what a recess is. She noted the courts found ambiguity on the issue when Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., unsuccessfully challenged President George W. Bush's 2004 recess appointment of William Pryor to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Ultimately, a challenge to Cordray's authority as director could come from an organization that finds itself in the CFPB's cross hairs, said Jess Sharp, executive director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Center for Capital Markets.

"Chances are that someone is going to take the view that this was an improper appointment — and that this person (Cordray) doesn't have the full authority of the bureau because he came to the position as a recess appointment when the Senate wasn't in recess," Sharp said.

Obama had made installing Cordray a high priority because the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, by law, lacks power without a chief. The law that established the CFPB gives the agency oversight authority over non-bank financial companies such as payday lenders, credit reporting agencies, mortgage companies and debt collectors. Much of that oversight power sits with the agency's director, however, rather than the agency itself.

The Ohio speech was billed as an address on the president's economic vision. Obama said the appointment was an important step toward strengthening oversight and "will bring us closer to an economy where everyone plays by the same rules."

Obama didn't address the legality of his decision, but White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer dismissed the Republican argument as "gimmickry."

Jagermeister
01-13-2012, 10:02 AM
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/12/us-usa-obama-appointments-idUSTRE80B1EA20120112


(Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday defended President Barack Obama's controversial recess appointments to two agencies, releasing a detailed legal analysis of why the appointments passed constitutional muster.

The legal opinion followed furious complaints from Senate Republicans who accused Obama of trampling the Constitution and sidestepping the Senate confirmation process when he installed a new chief at the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and three members of the National Labor Relations Board.

Republicans blocked Obama's nomination of Richard Cordray to head the recently established consumer bureau, which they oppose as an excessive government intrusion on the financial industry. The bureau was set up after the 2008 financial crisis and Democrats argue it is needed to keep tabs on the industry.

The fight over appointments goes back more than a century and has escalated in recent years as more and more nominees have been blocked. Democrats in the Senate first sought to use short breaks to bar then President George W. Bush from making recess appointments and now Republicans have done the same to Obama.

However, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which provides legal advice to the president as well as government agencies, said Obama was within his constitutional authority to make appointments when the Senate was briefly away.

"We conclude that while Congress can prevent the president from making any recess appointments by remaining continuously in session and available to receive and act on nominations, it cannot do so by conducting pro forma sessions during a recess," the opinion said.

A legal cloud has hung over whether the appointments were constitutional because the Senate at the time was holding brief so-called pro forma sessions every three days, which Republicans thought would block Obama from making recess appointments.

The White House had previously argued that the Senate began its holiday break on December 17 and would not be back until January 23, thus enabling Obama to make the recess appointments.

"The Senate as a body does not uniformly appear to consider its recess broken by pre-set pro forma sessions," the 23-page opinion said, authored by Virginia Seitz, assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel.

She also said that the pro forma sessions have lasted only seconds and that the "purpose of these sessions avowedly is not to conduct business," noting that messages to the Senate were not accepted during those meetings.

REPUBLICANS UNCONVINCED

The opinion drew quick fire from Senate Republicans who called it "unconvincing" and legally incorrect.

"It fundamentally alters the careful separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches that the framers crafted in the Constitution," said Chuck Grassley, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been considering a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the appointments and legal experts said anyone subject to rules or regulations imposed by the two agencies could challenge whether they were legal.

"We are not going to sue today, because one has to see what he (Cordray) does and what the three new guys at the National Labor Relations Board do," said Tom Donohue, head of the Chamber of Commerce, noting that "everybody's trying to sort out" the details of a possible constitutional challenge.

Republicans have pointed out that the Senate did conduct legislative business during the December 23 pro forma when the chamber approved a tax cut extension and appointed lawmakers to work out differences on pending tax legislation.

Seitz's legal opinion acknowledged such views and that while it was conceivable that the Senate could have provided advice and consent on the pending nominations during a pro forma session, those examples did not bar the president's authority.

Because the scheduling order for those sessions said there would be "no business conducted," Obama could determine the Senate was in recess "regardless of whether the Senate has disregarded its own orders on prior occasions."

The opinion was dated January 6, two days after Obama made the appointments, however an administration official said the advice was given orally to the White House before the written opinion.

(Additional reporting by David Ingram: Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Eric Walsh)

Nickdfresh
01-13-2012, 02:49 PM
Um, they were in recess. Pro forma bullshit doesn't count. It was a move by the bulwark partisan shitheads in the congress to attempt to forestall the Presidents app'ts.


"The Senate has effectively been in recess for weeks, and is expected to remain in recess for weeks," White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer wrote for The White House Blog. "In an overt attempt to prevent the President from exercising his authority during this period, Republican Senators insisted on using a gimmick called 'pro forma' sessions, which are sessions during which no Senate business is conducted and instead one or two Senators simply gavel in and out of session in a matter of seconds."

"But gimmicks do not override the President’s constitutional authority to make appointments to keep the government running. Legal experts agree. In fact, the lawyers who advised President Bush on recess appointments wrote that the Senate cannot use sham 'pro forma' sessions to prevent the President from exercising a constitutional power," he added.

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/fox-news-analyst-obama-vigilante-making-rece

Jagermeister
01-13-2012, 03:14 PM
Oh ok. So it's works if you are a Democrat. It's ok to use a pro forma to block an appointment, in fact, that's why you do it.

I see. Typical. :rolleyes:


http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/banking-financial-institutions/202335-reids-backs-obama-for-ignoring-pro-forma-sessions-he-once-pushed

Reid backs Obama after using pro forma sessions to block Bush
By Peter Schroeder - 01/04/12 12:13 PM ET

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who previously held pro forma sessions to block recess appointments by President George W. Bush, said Wednesday he supported President Obama's decision to ignore those sessions to push through one of his key nominees.

"I support President Obama's decision," he said in a statement.


The White House announced Wednesday that Obama planned to recess appoint Richard Cordray to be director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). However, Republicans immediately cried foul about the move. They argue that because the holiday break has been broken up by brief pro forma sessions, the Senate is not in recess and the appointment is illegitimate.

Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said the novel move "arrogantly circumvented the American people."

However, the White House maintains that those sessions, typically held every three days and lasting a few seconds, are not legitimate and can be ignored for the purpose of making recess appointments. The administration cited lawyers that advised President George W. Bush when he was in office who argued that such brief sessions should be discounted.



On the other side of the argument at that time was Reid, who began holding pro forma sessions in 2007 to block Bush nominees.


"I had to keep the Senate in pro-forma session to block the Bradbury appointment. That necessarily meant no recess appointments could be made," he said on the Senate floor in 2008, as Democrats blocked a potential recess appointment of Steven Bradbury to be the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush administration. Bradbury is one of the attorneys cited by the Obama White House in justifying the Cordray move.
But Wednesday, Reid said he supported Obama's decision, arguing that Republicans were blocking the nomination in an attempt to re-legislate the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. A filibuster-proof group of GOP lawmakers announced before Cordray was even nominated that they would block any pick until structural changes were made to the bureau.


"Republicans have been trying to make an end run around the law by denying this watchdog a leader," Reid said. "Despite admitting that President Obama’s nominee, Richard Cordray, is qualified for the job, Republicans denied him an up-or-down vote in an effort to substantially weaken the agency."



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chefcraig
01-13-2012, 03:18 PM
Oh ok. So it's works if you are a Democrat. It's ok to use a prforma to block an appointment, in fact, that's why you do it.


Isn't prforma that weird anti-acne cream Katy Perry does those infomercials for?

Jagermeister
01-13-2012, 03:19 PM
:rolleyes:

Jagermeister
01-13-2012, 03:21 PM
I've been waiting all day long to pull that rabbit out chef and you had to go an do that. :biggrin:

knuckleboner
01-14-2012, 09:22 AM
to be fair, the Constitution doesn't specify what recess is. and i would have to agree that multiple pro forma sessions in a row, without any legislative business being done for weeks, constitutes a recess.

that said, especially with corday, the senate republicans are simply being obstructionist. they don't want that post filled by anybody, since they oppose the CFPB, so they're opposing every pick. that's not what the constitution meant by advise and consent. if they don't like the law that created the CFPB, they can work to change the law. but a backdoor, we'll just never fill the position, is not the way to go.