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Senate Nano-Sessions

BPSCG

Penultimate Amazing
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Interesting parliamentary stunt to keep Bush from making recess appointments:
Vacationing in Rhode Island with his family over the weekend, Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) cut short his holiday break and raced back to Washington today to be part of a Democratic line of defense against the White House.

All told, Reed's work today will likely last no more than 25 seconds. It's the latest effort made by a Senate Democrat in the party's months-long battle against President Bush's ability to make interim appointments while the Senate is on recess.

From the lowest-ranking freshmen to long-serving lions of the chamber, Democrats have queued up this holiday season to take turns overseeing pro forma sessions for the Senate. The Senate is considered to be in a pro forma session if a member officially gavels it open and then gavels it closed.

As long as these sessions are held at least every fourth day, the Senate is not considered in recess, and, therefore, Bush cannot make interim appointments to high-level posts that would otherwise require Senate confirmation.

Such interim appointments last only for the remainder of that particular Congress. But with just 12 months remaining in Bush's presidency, a recess appointment would last almost to the end of his term. So, when the Senate finished its legislative session on Dec. 19, for the second time in a month Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) called for pro forma sessions.
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Why should Bush need to make recess appointments in the first place?
More than 165 nominations currently await Senate action.

This is an abuse by the Democrats of their advise-and-consent power. They are trying to dictate executive branch policy and, failing that, to run out the clock on 2008 and prevent the federal government from staffing itself.
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Dave Barry's annual review of the past year sums up this congress's fecklessness:
January: Upon taking power, the Democrats, who campaigned vigorously against the war in Iraq, and who hailed their victory as a clear voter mandate to get the troops out of Iraq, immediately get down to the business of being careful to not do anything that might actually result in the removal of troops from Iraq, in case that might turn out to be a bad idea. This is fine with President Bush, who calls for a "troop surge," based on his understanding of the comprehensive Iraq Study Group report, as interpreted for him by aides equipped with 20,000 GI Joe action figures....

February: Democrats in the House of Representatives, after a large amount of talking, pass a nonbinding resolution sternly ordering President Bush to get out of Iraq, unless, of course, he chooses not to. Over in the Senate, Democrats try to pass a nonbinding resolution that would not bind the president to the same course of action that the House resolution did not bind him to. But that one fails, leaving the president, according to political observers, somewhat less nonbound than he might otherwise have been. Everyone agrees it has been a busy, busy time in Washington.

May: Democrats in Congress -- continuing to implement their policy of being passionately against the war while avoiding doing anything that might get them blamed for stopping the war -- vote to continue funding the war, but boldly enter many snippy remarks about it into the congressional record. President Bush receives this devastating news stoically, then goes ahead and makes his putt.

July: President Bush undergoes a colonoscopy; congressional Democrats immediately pass a resolution condemning the procedure, while maintaining that they "fully support the colonoscope."

December: In Washington, President Bush proposes to ease the subprime mortgage crisis via a two-pronged program consisting of interest rate freezes and water-boarding. Outraged congressional Democrats promise to pass a nonbinding resolution containing language so strong that nobody will be able to look directly at it without sunglasses.
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Wonder what Dave's gonna do with 25 second long Senate sessions...
 
"President Bush receives this devastating news stoically, then goes ahead and makes his putt."

Bwah haha
 
Aw, give them some credit for actually doing something forceful, even if it means not doing anything... They aren't complete wusses, just 99.5% wusses.
 
Tsukasa Buddha said:
Aw, give them some credit for actually doing something forceful, even if it means not doing anything... They aren't complete wusses, just 99.5% wusses.
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I suppose libertarians should modify their joke line about it being good when Congress does nothing, to expand it to the government as a whole, to guard against excursions by other branches.
 
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February: Democrats in the House of Representatives, after a large amount of talking, pass a nonbinding resolution sternly ordering President Bush to get out of Iraq, unless, of course, he chooses not to. Over in the Senate, Democrats try to pass a nonbinding resolution that would not bind the president to the same course of action that the House resolution did not bind him to. But that one fails, leaving the president, according to political observers, somewhat less nonbound than he might otherwise have been. Everyone agrees it has been a busy, busy time in Washington.
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Of all the non-binding resolutionaries, those Dems in the House and Senate are the non-binding resolutionaryest.:p

With appologies to the late Charles Schulz
 
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Well, ...

if it takes some procedural trick to prevent Bush from further ruining the nation,
then I am all for it.
 
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Crossbow said:
Well, ...

if it takes some procedural trick to prevent Bush from further ruining the nation circumvent the Constitution,
then I am all for it.
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Fixed it for you.

And of course, being the fair-minded person we all know you to be, you'll have no objection when a Republican Senate majority someday pulls the same stunt against a Democratic president.
 
BPSCG said:
Why should Bush need to make recess appointments in the first place?
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Does he need to? He's not making recess appointments to clear the backlog - he's doing it for specific nominees that the Senate is disinclined to approve (you know, the Senate's constitutional responsibility - that is: to not approve those they don't approve of).

Bush should pull nominees who aren't making progress, perhaps listen to the reasons for disapproval, and then send someone else. If he wants to make regular use of recess to get his non-approved nominees into the job, then he should expect that the Senate would make moves to stop him.

It's not a stunt - it's just the Senate sticking up for their prerogatives - something I'm glad to see.
 
hgc said:
Does he need to? He's not making recess appointments to clear the backlog - he's doing it for specific nominees that the Senate is disinclined to approve (you know, the Senate's constitutional responsibility - that is: to not approve those they don't approve of).

Bush should pull nominees who aren't making progress, perhaps listen to the reasons for disapproval, and then send someone else. If he wants to make regular use of recess to get his non-approved nominees into the job, then he should expect that the Senate would make moves to stop him.

It's not a stunt - it's just the Senate sticking up for their prerogatives - something I'm glad to see.
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So the Senate's "prerogatives" are more important than the ongoing business of the country? I know the Senate is full of blowhard gasbags who think the sun shines out of their own behinds, but come on...

If the Senate doesn't like a nominee, then it should vote him/her down. Or do you think a lone Democratic committee chairman should have the power to prevent a Democratic-majority Senate from approving an appointment?

This is no way to run a government. It will someday come back to bite a Democratic president when a Republican majority does exactly the same thing. What recourse will that Democratic president have?
 
BPSCG said:
So the Senate's "prerogatives" are more important than the ongoing business of the country? I know the Senate is full of blowhard gasbags who think the sun shines out of their own behinds, but come on...

If the Senate doesn't like a nominee, then it should vote him/her down. Or do you think a lone Democratic committee chairman should have the power to prevent a Democratic-majority Senate from approving an appointment?

This is no way to run a government. It will someday come back to bite a Democratic president when a Republican majority does exactly the same thing. What recourse will that Democratic president have?
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Oh please, whats with the hysterics?

Bush's nominees are crony hack commissars - to a man, and we're not missing a thing by having those positions unfilled. No way to run a government is the way Bush has been doing it for 7 years.

But have I been crying on the Internets that Bush is making recess appointments? No. I've been calling on the Senate Dems to grow a pair and just not recess long enough to let him get away with it.

Republicans did it plenty to Clinton, and he also made some recess appointments. I have no doubt they'll do it to the next Dem president, if they ever get a Senate majority again. Thanks for complaining in advance on my behalf.
 
BPSCG said:
Fixed it for you.

And of course, being the fair-minded person we all know you to be, you'll have no objection when a Republican Senate majority someday pulls the same stunt against a Democratic president.
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Well, no thanks to you for altering my original statement.

However, to answer your question, yes I would rather see a future majority Republican Senate hold token sessions to prevent a possible recess appointment by a Democrat President as opposed to allowing Bush to make recess appointments now.

Considering what Bush has done to destroy the nation, I have no problem at all taking a challenge like that!
 
Correct me if I'm wrong but hasn't Bush been abusing recess appointements to shove through nominees who're unacceptable to Congress rather than simply making appointments when Congress happened to be in recess? If so I don't think Republicans have any call to complain about circumventing the Constitution.
 
That's how the politician with the world's worst soup-strainer got appointed to the UN.

Man... I really couldn't believe they actually did it too - Josh frickin Bolton?? Its like nominating Jerry Falwell to the Office of Homosexual Affairs.
 
. . . if it takes some procedural trick to prevent Bush from circumventing the Constitution . . . .
BPSCG said:
Fixed it for you.
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Opposing Bush by circumventing the Constitution?
You just caused some of my favorite brain cells to asplode.
 
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BPSCG said:
Evidence?
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"The Republicans' hands aren't clean on this either. What we did with Bill Clinton's nominees - about 62 of them - we just didn't give them votes in committee or we didn't bring them up." -Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) May 8, 2005
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Granted, the source is a partisan extremist...
 
"What goes around, comes around". It's a time honored tradition to use recess appointments to bypass the usual track, even if the appointments might be controversial. Now it's fair game for the republicans to pull the same stunt when a democrat is in the White House. It's not clear to me that the democrats have looked at the long term cost of what they are doing. It is taking short term gain with long term losses. Stupid, but not out of character for the least effective majority party that I can recall.
 
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