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I’m not a big fan of the recess appointment per se. It was designed at a time when Senators traveled back and forth between their states and Washington in horse-drawn carriages, and was meant to be used in case they could not return in a timely manner and an appointment needed to be filled. Needless to say, we don’t have that problem now. And in 2007, Harry Reid started using pro forma sessions, lasting a matter of seconds, to stop George W. Bush from making recess appointments when the chamber was on a break. Someone local (Jim Webb of Virginia for example) would come in, gavel the Senate to order, and gavel out. Recess appointments dropped dramatically.
I am a big fan of using whatever you have at your disposal to advance progress, so this is a disappointment:
The Senate will stay in pro forma session next week after failing to agree Thursday to adjourn for its scheduled weeklong Memorial Day recess.
Senate Budget ranking member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) threatened this week to block any unanimous consent request to adjourn because Senate Democrats had not offered a budget resolution for a floor vote. Other Republican Senators were also fighting adjournment to prevent President Barack Obama from making recess appointments.
The budget thing is a red herring. This was to block recess appointments.
At first, the theory was that the Senate would just get the House to block adjournment resolutions. The Constitution holds that both chambers must agree to an adjournment. However, the schedule is staggered this year, with the House adjourning at different times as the Senate. If the House blocked the Senate from adjournment, the Senate could do the same, turning the off time into a big hassle, where the House must make arrangements for a pro forma session. House aides told Brian Beutler that they would probably not step in to block an adjournment from the Senate.
So this is entirely on the Senate to fail to come up with an adjournment motion. Jeff Sessions planned to block unanimous consent. And while seeking cloture would have had them sitting around a couple days, Democrats may have figured they couldn’t get 7 Republicans to agree to adjourn. Or maybe Harry Reid just wanted to go home. So Reid never even made the motion.
The upshot of this is that the Obama Administration will have no opportunity in the next week to make recess appointments, including one for Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The larger point is that Republicans have threatened to filibuster ANYONE for that job unless they get to gut the agency. Without the recess appointment at the President’s disposal, theoretically there will be no CFPB Director. And come July 21, without a director CFPB loses the ability to regulate nonbank financial institutions.
I’m not sure a recess appointment was coming this week anyway. The Administration has used them sparingly. But for Senate Dems to get nothing in exchange for doing pro forma sessions seems crazy to me.
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Welcome to Honduras you filthy American swine!
But surely OFA will use this to outrage to fundraise and list build. Win the Future.
IMO, if the repugs are worried about Elizabeth Warren they shouldn’t be. Obama has had ample opportunity to do what is right and didn’t give it a second thought.
Nah, I’m thinking they are much more worried about recess appointments of judges.
We govern with the obama we have, not the obama we “Hoped” for.
He wasn’t going to piss off his owners and lose the promise of the good life from his owner’s by making any recess appointments.
obama is a bushie in democratic clothing.
Yep. well put.
And as far as I’m concerned, the Democratic members of Congress with few exceptions are no different from the Republican majority that were in place prior to the election of 2006. Even though they had the majority of BOTH houses, the Democrats continued to rubber stamp George Bush’s requests for unfunded military appropriations and they even sent 100,000 more troops over there in 2007. Obama might crow about bringing 100,000 home in August of 2010,but from my perspective this is status quo–not any progressive action on his part. Just another shell game to make things look like what they are not.
But the Democratic leadership is not paying attention to how angry their base is. In 2010 no less than 22 Blue Dogs lost their seats in Congress and many of them lost because the Unions and working people not only withdrew their support, they also actively campaigned against them. The most shining example being Blanche Lincoln who stood somewhere between a Blue Dog and a Wall Street Corporate Centrist Democrat.
Obama did trick bag the Democratic Party base by pretending to be a “progressive” when in fact he is not only a hard core Wall Street Corporate Centrist, he is an elitist good ole boy. If you will notice how many of his appointments have connections to his own alma mater. Obama is a plutocrat just like the majority of those running the Washington oligarchy.
Obama is the WORST Democtratic President we have ever had & one of the WORST Presidents, period. The obvious two questions for FDLers are: what one substantive program has he enacted that supports a Democratic ideology? And, why hasn’t FDL said he should be Primaried?
FDL has had no problem taking strong positions on Manning, torture, HCR, extremely important issues. Isn’t it time for FDL to stop trying to play nice & start arguing Obama should be primaried.
“Clarence Thomas” Obama is an wanna-bee elitist Republican desperately paying his dues to gain membership in “the club”. He’s an amoral person doing the bidding of TERRIBLE interests. He’s a LOT worse than ANY Republican, simply because he has the power to effect real change, to right terrible wrongs, and yet, he REFUSES to do so. Shame on him.
If Reid had any balls and was not in the thrall of his Mormon masters he could bring up adjournment every hour, on the hour, and have quorum calls every hour to prevent the gopricks from going to their memorial day parades to feign patriotism.
Keep the bastards in DC in a glorious muggy weekend and see how they like it.
Of course expecting Harry Reid to have balls is like, well expecting the Big Zero to have a spine.
Not if you are a Republican he isn’t. He is like the geeky kid that tries desperately to be liked by the ‘cool kids’ and they manipulate him into doing dirty tricks for them. He gets the blame and they laugh their asses off watching him make a fool of himself! That being said, he has done a couple good thing son his own, just pales in comparison to the platform he campaigned on.
You can bet the farm this was done with the blessing of the White House, and yet they can now say “What, it’s not our fault. We couldn’t appoint Warren because the Senate failed to adjourn.”
And you know what?
Their apologists will eat it up like it’s caviar at the Royal Wedding.
The saddest part of all is that we need those apologists on our side. But if they refuse to see reality, what can we do??? We’re so screwed.
Reid and the democrats CAN adjourn if they want to. It is Reid who is scheduling the pro forma sessions. The dems are doing this so they don’t have to vote on not marking up a budget which they are required to do so by law. ONLY the majority can schedule pro forma sessions.
Here is how adjournment would work:
1 Reid asks for unanimous consent to adjourn
2 Repubs object, saying Senate can’t adjourn wo marking up a budget
3 51 votes are then required to adjourn
Reid is either doesn’t want his members to have to take that vote or he fears he would loose it.
You do not need to file cloture to adjourn. You only need 51 votes to adjourn if their is an objection to unanimous consent.
Yes, there are several tools the Democrats could use IF THEY WANTED TO.
So, when they don’t, it’s because THEY CHOOSE NOT TO.
And this is the reality that the apologists I mentioned above refuse to see. Close their eyes and yell “la la la I can’t here you” and then berate US for being unrealistic.
So frustrating. So, so, so frustrating.
we need to stop making silly assumptions!
Obama probably told his GOP buddies to keep the Senate in Pro Forma
Obama could have appointed Elizabeth Warren years ago
Clarence Thomas AKA OBAMA hates Elizabeth Warren
Obama also hates the following
OBAMA hates FDR, JFK, and MLK (Martin Luther King was a real liberal)
OBAMA hates Fire Dog Lake and other real liberal blogs
OBAMA hates UNIONS
Obama hates Progressives
we need to stop acting like OBAMA is trying to help working people and promote real democratic point of views
OBAMA loves WALL STREET
OBAMA loves Health Insurance Companies
OBAMA aka Mr. Hopey Change is a CON MAN
democrats agonized over this during the Bush years. The goopers did it in a heartbeat.
democrats are prolly never going to convince, whoever they are trying to convince, that they are the reasonable ones and the goops are the loonies.
That argument does not seem to work well.
YMMV and I am willing to be shown evidence to the contrary.
Actually wish Sharon Angle had defeated that Quisling piece of shit.
Don’t think of “Republicans” and “Democrats”. Think of the Unitary Party whose main purpose is to give the illusion of “real” differences while at the same time protecting and enhancing the power of the plutocracy.
I realize that the Democratic Party’s love affair with Rule 22′s optional supermajority cloture process (as its preferred substitute for default simple-majority Senate order) – despite the absence of obstructive floor debate (aka “filibusters”) for almost two decades now – has, with the fake quorum call, already deliberately choked the life out of the democratic legislative process in the Senate, but come on, Party-storyline-smitten writers/editors:
Senate basics, from Rule 22, Paragraph 1:
Thus (unlike the original reason for the optional Paragraph 2 portion of Rule 22, which may be invoked by successful supermajority cloture motion), not even the the possibility, however remote, of obstructive (or any) floor debate exists to theoretically or otherwise delay an immediate simple-majority vote on a motion to adjourn.
And the Senate, at about 8:30 p.m. last evening, did in fact, repeatedly, formally “adjourn” (to different days for brief pro forma sessions – which will, yes, block recess approintments), by unanimous consent:
Obviously Jeff Sessions, proving that his threat to do so was just empty rhetoric, did not appear on the floor (or otherwise) to “object” to Harry Reid’s/Klobuchar’s unanimous consent request, and thus chose not to force his colleagues – half of whom had probably already fled Washington by then, after the last (PATRIOT Act) vote hours earlier – to appear for a rollcall vote on a motion to adjourn, which might have helped Sessions to highlight this year’s failure of the Senate Budget Committee to write and vote on a budget plan for the nation.
Elizabeth Warren will never become the head of the CFPB. Obama doesn’t want it and Congress doesn’t want it – because the Banks don’t want her in that position. In any society as corrupt as ours, the last thing the powerful want is a smart person who is brave enough to tell the truth.
I agree TOTALLY with your first conclusion. But, I honestly don’t know ONE substantive policy/program he’s enacted that benefits the middle-class or America’s children & grandchildren in any way, not one. And, he had a Democratic Congress for TWO years! Obama is a disgrace, the WORST Democratic President ever.
You nailed it. Period.
And we’re supposed to be surprised?
Sounds like more of the same if you ask me.
Expect nothing, never be dissapointed.
Absolutely.
I have a hard time with assumptions that Dr. Warren’s apppointment is in the offing.
Anyone know WHY Jane called off her idea to flood Nevada with canvassers, callers & financial support to defeat Harry Reid’s reelection bid? No question, I REALLY would’ve preferred to see a powerless Sharron Angle in the Senate then another six years of Harry Reid.
IIRC Sharon Angle said something even beyond the normal levels of batshit crazy we have come to expect from Caribou Barbie and her stupider twin Michele from Minnesota. Can’t remember what it was, but it cost her a 5 or 6 point lead. I doubt it would have made much of a difference in the long run anyway because either Dick Durban or Chucky Schumer would have become Obama’s new water carriers in the Senate.
Though it would have been satisfying as hell and it might have scared the pants off the centrist and moderate Dem mofo’s to have ended the career of “Fightin’” Harry Reid…oh well.
If 3.1% of progressives in Nevada would have switched from Reid to Angle it would have shown the Democrats that their base will throw them out if they continue to act like moderate Republicans.
Nothing the Dems have done nothing in decades has appealed to me and I’m not throwing my vote away on a third-party candidate in 2012 or voting for Dems again because I fear Republicans. My only option is to vote Republican and throw the Dems out.
has nicely backed himself in a corner again, they need on by July 21 and they need one that can get confirmed. Now Obama can clame he was “forced” to apoint a banker frindly head.
Even if the recess appointment is no longer possible, no matter what happens with Elizabeth Warren, you will want to watch her next step. I am sure she has learned a lot. And she has made some inroads into the banking community. She has also built up a lot of popularity. I will be watching her with great interest.
I *so* wish we were rid of Reid. He is even worse than before, if that is at all possible. And wowee, his past statements and the video compared with today’s statements and video really show what a political tool he is. He will say and do anything. He has no principles of his own. Not one. Except perhaps ‘comity’ with his colleagues. Fuck Reid.
Then I guess the only thing left for her to do will be to accept a “Draft Warren for President” invitation to primary that corporatist cocksucker Obama.
Me, too.
The answer seems obvious, FDLers. The Repubs ran Sharron Angle because they LOVE Harry Reid and he was SO weak she was about the ONLY Republican he could beat. Repubs knew they weren’t going to win control of the Senate the Senate so it makes a lot of sense that they’d prefer a “very friendly to Republicans” Democratic Leader of the Senate to a no-power first-term Republican Senator, whomever it was. So, it makes perfect sense why Jane called off a raucus fight Progressives could only lose. The point is clear and simple: Corporations are in control, not Republican voters and certainly not Democratic voters.
Second amendment remedies.