Obama Considering Nuclear Option On Recess Appointments—In a 15-second Break?

posted at 11:08 am on January 3, 2012 by Rovin

According to a Fox news story, President Obama is, (in his tradition of throwing out all the rules/Chicago Politics), considering an ill advised strategy to nuke Harry and Nancy’s political obstructionism that caused the shutdown of George Bush’s recess appointments for his entire final year in office.

“Republicans are watching closely to see if President Obama attempts to make what’s called “recess appointments” in the coming days. In early December, Senate Republicans stymied the president by blocking his effort to install former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray as the head of the new and controversial Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Cordray never scored an actual, up-or-down vote in the Senate. Most Republicans voted against a Democratic-led effort to cut off debate on Cordray’s nomination. The vote was 53-45 but needed 60 to break the filibuster.

There are also questions as to whether Mr. Obama might attempt to go the recess appointment route to dispatch figures to the federal bench as the Senate failed to clear eight of the president’s judicial nominees before the end of December. And some speculate that the president could also use recess appointments to place several individuals on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).”

But, here’s the “catch 22”:

So, without the consent of both chambers of Congress, the House and Senate have continued to meet at three day intervals for all of 2011. When legislative business finally wrapped in Washington for the year a few days ago, neither the House nor Senate offered what’s called an “adjournment resolution.” That would have allowed both chambers to abandon town for a longer period of time. Such an adjournment resolution would have made it easy for President Obama to make a recess appointment if he desired. But without both houses of Congress making an adjournment pact, there was no virtually no opportunity for the president to make a recess appointment.

Except potentially between the first and second sessions of the 112th Congress.

There’s significant debate about whether this narrow window between the first and second sessions is the only chance a president could have to circumvent the traditional confirmation process and make a recess appointment.

So the Senate is on track to move between the first and second sessions of the 112th Congress. Just seven times in its history has Congress had an intersession of less than a day in its history. In January, 1996, Congress hermetically air-locked the end of the first session the 104th Congress up against the second session by a matter of seconds. The Senate convened for the final meeting of the first session of the 104th Congress at 11:55 am on January 3, 1996. The second session was scheduled to start at noon. Once the Senate finished its bookkeeping for that brief meeting, it adjourned…for all of 15 seconds. It then launched the second session of the 104th Congress. (read the entire article here)

Obama may actually plan to use the window of opportunity, when the 111^th Congress gavels out and the 112^th gavels in—which could be a matter of seconds—to make his recess appointments.

I’d venture a guess that Republican strategist are watching this potential maneuver closely, as well as Democrats who might be looking to the future, just in case next year there’s a President with an R behind his name.  (apologies to Michelle Bachmann)

Slightly interesting that much of the self inflicted bourgeois media is not much ado about this?  Politico, in a similar story, sites a couple of law professors saying that “Republicans are obstructing the process” while failing to even mention who created this fiasco in the first place.  A commenter at Politico summed up Obama’s predicament quite well:

“Funny that the same hardcore lefties that are screeching about the Republicans and pushing the president to use a 2-second break to “Jam” through his radical nominees are the same ones who supported Pelosi and Reid when they did the same thing to Bush by keeping the session open, thus denying him the ability to recess appoint anyone. Had G.W used a couple Min. break to shove his blocked nominees through like the left is trying to do now, it would have been “Nuclear”, “Unprecedented” and “Reckless”.

I hope the leftwing progs understand that once Oblunder does this that they will never again be able to stop a Republican President from doing the same thing.”

As they say, the ball’s now in Obama’s court.  Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi set this table/rules that prevented Bush from making any recess appointments.  If Obama chooses to circumvent this process, it may be at the peril of his own party and future appointments that Democrats might not embrace—eating the fruit from their own poisonous tree.

Update:  I missed Ed Morrissey’s story on this  on Dec. 28th; (I think it was while I was literally stranded at SFO for three hours waiting for the fog to lift) Apologies for being repetitive.

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