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GOP to Reid: Thanks for caving on filibuster reform, we will now destroy the Consumer Financial Prot
GOP to Reid: Thanks for caving on filibuster reform, we will now destroy the Consumer Financial Protection BoardThe Senate minority exercises its right to block an agency from functioning because they don't like it
BY ALEX PAREENE
It was very fitting that pretty much immediately after Harry Reid ended the possibility of filibuster reform in the more-sclerotic-than-ever U.S. Senate, a Republican appointee-run court effectively killed the recess appointment. Reid cut a “deal” on filibusters that actually strengthened the 60-vote threshold, by legitimizing what had been widely seen by non-senators as unprecedented abuse of Senate rules. All the deal does is speed up the process of breaking a filibuster with 60 votes, making the act of forcing a 60-vote threshold on all Senate business — something that rapidly became the new normal — even more painless than it was before.
Right after Mitch McConnell was granted unelected co-leadership of the Senate, the D.C. Court of Appeals announced that we’ve been doing this whole recess appointment thing all wrong for the last century or so, and that the Founders only intended for presidents to make recess appointments during “the Recess,” between sessions, and only of positions that became vacant during that recess. This allows Senate Republicans to totally prevent Barack Obama from appointing anyone to the National Labor Relations Board and the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Not just “people Republicans disapprove of,” but anyone at all, because Republicans disapprove of those two agencies carrying out their missions.
Now, naturally, after Reid cut the deal allowing them to do so without consequences, Republicans wasted no time in announcing their intention to prevent Barack Obama from appointing anyone to run the CFPB unless he effectively restructures the agency to not serve its purpose. This is, as a couple of others have noted, effectively “nullification,” and it’s generally frowned upon by fans of functioning republican forms of government.
The signs of the total normalization of what would have been considered a shocking violation of political norms just a few years ago are all over the Reuters story on Republican intentions. The story presents it as a typical political fight, one side against the other, both lobbing accusations and impugning the motives of the other. One subheadline reads, helpfully, “POLITICS AT PLAY.” Typical Washington, always with the politics! Why can’t No Labels just get these jokers to get along?
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http://www.salon.com/2013/02/04/gop_to_reid_thanks_for_caving_on_filibuster_reform_we_will_now_destroy_the_consumer_financial_protection_board/
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