Consider the source! :wow:
http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.25940/pub_detail.aspTime for Congress to Stand Up to Bush on Recess Appointments
By Norman J. Ornstein
snip//
So now we get to last week's Bush appointees--Sam Fox as ambassador to Belgium, Susan Dudley to be head of the Office of Management and Budget's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and Andrew Biggs to be deputy commissioner of the Social Security Administration. The action on Sam Fox is a lot like Lann Lee but also has its unique elements; the administration saw he was going to be rejected, withdrew the nomination an hour before the vote in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and then made him a recess appointee when the Senate went away for a matter of days over Easter and Passover. Under law, Fox could not be appointed and get payment for his services, so the president indicated that Fox, a wealthy man, would serve without pay. There are serious questions about the legality of that ploy.
As for Dudley, the appointment is even more shocking, since the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee had scheduled a hearing on her nomination and, under Chairman Joe Lieberman (ID-Conn.), probably would have approved the nomination. Biggs simply is an "up yours" gesture to the Senate Finance Committee, which did not like his antagonism toward the Social Security system.
The bottom line is that if these are not the first recess appointments that skirted the intent of the framers and distorted and abused the Constitution, they are among the most blatant. The practical reality, though, is that Congress cannot easily reverse them or change the behavior of a president who is willing and eager to expand his own power, ignore norms and comity between the branches and push things to another level. The Fox case might make it to the Supreme Court because of the technical questions surrounding voluntary service without pay, but probably not before Fox had served in the post for many months.
Why did the president make these appointments? Overall, he clearly chose to make a set of in-your-face gestures designed to show his base that the lame-duck president with a 35 percent approval rating is alive and well and will kick back against the enemy--i.e., the Democrats in Congress. That need was strong enough that the president was willing to alienate Lieberman and Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and along the way endanger immigration reform, Social Security reform and other issues. But there is a bigger danger. Every time a president abuses a power like this one, stretching the circumstances under which he will use recess appointments, it becomes a precedent for his successors, who will use his actions as a base point to stretch the power even further. The more the power is used with impunity, the more the core principles of the separation of powers are eroded.
So what is a Congress to do? The only answer is to use its own powers to make clear to the president that there is a cost, and a serious one, to such behavior. Of course, the Senate can block other presidential nominees, but that kind of hostage-taking or revenge killing would mean further damaging the already fragile nomination process and discouraging good people from service.
The more tempting course is to use the power of the purse. Mr. Fox may find he can serve in Belgium, but there are lots of ways to make his tour of duty unpleasant, including cutting off funds for his residence. And there are ways to make White House operations more difficult without cutting essential services. I hate to see this kind of interbranch warfare. But it is time to put some limits on a presidential abuse of power that has gone way too far.
Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at AEI.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
