Unanimous: Obama's Recess Appointments Uncontistutional.

Supreme Court rebukes Obama on recess appointments

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Because, contrary to popular opinion inside the White House, there are limitations to presidential powers. Obama doesn't get to dictate other branches' business.

*points and laughs*

"In light of this bad news, Obama has retreated to Key Largo, FL for a few rounds of golf to help alleviate the stress of this recent revelation."

Whoops, didn't realize you made a thread for this topic. As I said in that other thread this clearly should have been done decades ago.

On a side note it's clear how well congress is working together for the good of the people these days.

Obama became the first president to appoint nominees when the Senate was in a “pro-forma” session, which is when the upper chamber is briefly called to order and adjourned every few days.

Read more: http://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/210665-high-court-rejects-obama-power-move-on-recess-appointments#ixzz35lQLi0XQ

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That was the crux of situation. Obama trying to acquire powers that don't belong to him, not the constitutionality of the recess appointments.

Agreed, but it's worth pointing out that "briefly" means a session that lasts about thirty seconds with only one person in the room. That person being the one who calls and closes the session.

I guess my point is that this is also more or less an abuse of power. If the other party attempted such shenanigans simply to limit progress how excited would you be?

Good news

Liberals should get through their heads that some people don't see preventing the implementation of Obama's agenda as "limiting progress".

I thought what Obama did was fine despite it obviously being unconstitutional.

I would feel the same way if a Republican president did this in the face of petty parliamentary trickery from senate democrats.

The less power the senate has the better IMO

The Democrats have already done such "shenanigans" against Bush.

Were you happy about it?

I know that nobody really uses the "If the shoe were on the other foot" mentality for their moral compass when it comes to politics, but it would be an awfully good way to keep politicians from lowering themselves to the level of the opposite party. Instead people want to see revenge happen which allows politicians to continually sink to new lows.

I didn't know about it back then. I only found out that Democrats had started using the pro forma sessions in 2007 to block Bush from making recess appointments after the controversy erupted with Obama's recess appointments a few years ago.

Overall I don't really like the concept of pro forma sessions, but I think the Congress has the authority to determine when they are in recess and the President doesn't.

So basically something EVERY president has done since our founding was just found to be unconstitutional. So what does this mean concerning every past recess appointment?

If the Senate is unwilling to appoint anyone and the president can't appoint them by these manners, what other avenues are there? Or is the senate minority capable of stopping any appointment this side of a super majority?

Edit: Sorry for my ignorance, I'm not too privy on the entire 'recess' appointment issue.

Good news.

This sounds like a new constitutional amendment to address these questions. It should address what is considered to be recess and when can the president make appointments to temporarily fill vacant positions and make it a requirement for congress to fill vacancies 100 days after being vacate.

I wonder if James Madison ever considered this issue as balance of power when there are special interests the president could fill positions that wouldn't be beneficial to the country as a whole.

So does this mean Congress can abandon their pro forma sessions?

I don't know. It seems to me that the ruling could lead to them doing more pro forma sessions. Democrats should've foreseen that Republicans could use these sessions against a Democratic president when Senate Democrats started using these pro forma sessions against Bush back in 2007. Their shortsightedness - or lack of willingness to think in the longer term - has cost them. You reap what you sow.

Legislation regulating this might be a good idea, probably more feasible than a constitutional amendment. However I don't think requiring Congress to fill vacancies within 100 days is a good idea, because that would mean that the president could appoint bad nominees that would automatically fill a vacancy within 100 days. The way the system currently work ensures that the president has to try to pick someone that would be acceptable to the senate.

Just like they will reap making just needing 50 votes to confirm judges and if the Republicans regain control of the Senate and then the WH they will reap the nuclear option (no more filibusters). Democrats started it and I hope Republicans finish it.

@Master_Live:

Did I miss something? When did the nuclear option get made other than the narrow version recently?

Also this is exactly what I was talking about when it comes to revenge.

I love how when the Republican party does shit like this you psychos still manage to blame the Democratic party...

Quite frankly if Congress wasn't such a useless piece of shit then maybe situations like these wouldn't happen. Our current government cares more about playing to their team than they do about doing any sort of good for the country and it needs to end now.

If only the government as a whole actually recognized when it did things that were unconstitutional....they'd have never done half the things they did in the past 50+ years. They only care when it benefits them

so what happens to the appointments made during that time? are they invalidated? will new people need to be appointed and the process begin anew?

at the rate things are going between congress and the executive branch. whoever is elected in 2016 should have all their appointed posts set up by the time they leave office.

The Republicans did consider doing something like that back in 2005 (when they controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress) and Democrats were against it then. Joe Biden called that "a fundamental power grab".Then in 2014, after years of threatening, Reid did change the filibuster rules, though the old filibuster rules still apply to Supreme Court judges and legislation.

Reid is not really in a good position to criticize Republicans for their 41-Senator filibusters of Democrat legislation, since he frequently does not let Republican bills come up for a floor-vote, essentially meaning he does a 1-man filibuster of their legislation.

Recess appointments only last until the end of the Congressional term, so the appointments Obama made had already expired last year. The issue here is that since those appointments were invalid, the National Labor Relations Board lacked a quota which means that any decisions they made in that period may be invalid.

@Serraph105: Funny when a demcorat president does something that Republicans don't like, they deem it unconstitutional. Nobody had any issue with the other presidents it seems

Are you aware of the SCOTUS vote pertaining to this matter?

Republicans did not object to Obama making a recess appointment because they thought recess appointments were unconstitutional. They objected because Congress wasn't in recess when Obama made the appointments, hence why the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that it was unconstitutional. Other presidents have used recess appointments, but they did so when Congress actually was in recess.