Recess Appointments

This weekend President Obama made 15 recess appointments which has brought forth complaints from the Republicans.

The recess appointment process allows the President to make an appointment during a congressional recess to a position which required Senate approval. The device allowed for the smooth functioning of government in an era when communication was slow, travel was by horse and buggy, and when Congress could be recessed for many months at a time. The appointments serve until the next round of congressional elections.

Modern presidents have used the device to make appoints of appointees who have been stalled in the Senate, either due to the candidate being a poor choice or due to the opposition party using tactics to block the president’s qualified nominees and thereby hindering the President’s ability to be the executive in chief.

In the modern age there should be little need to make recess appointments. When a president makes recess appointments as a means to by-pass Congress or as a means to install highly questionable candidates the president is abusing the process. All parties, the press and the public should cry out against his actions. On the other hand when such appointments are necessary because a handful of Senators for political reasons are blocking qualified appointees from receiving an up or down vote by the Senate then the nation should speak out against the Senate.

It seems that the current list of appointees fall into the latter category. All have long received majority support in the committees overseeing the appointee’s area, but vote on the nominees by the full Senate are being blocked by a number of Republicans.

Speaking to President Obama’s appointments Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl said the GOP would react “very strongly” if Obama bypasses the Senate. POLITICO quotes Kyle saying “It has to be done very sparingly.” This is from the man who defended the 179 recess appointments made by President Bush (that it at a rate of about 22 a year over his 8 years, about 25 if one dismisses the last eight months when such appointments are rare).

Kyle goes on to note that such appointments make it very difficult to have bipartisan cooperation when the President is arrogant with power. Kyl criticizes Obama for not adhering to the rule of the Senate while blocking the Senate from expressing its will by a recorded vote. The will Kyl is speaking about is not the majority will of the Senate but the will of a minority that is using the system to block nominees from coming forward.

Kyl needs to get a life. Would these appointments be necessary if he and his friends had allowed for an up and down vote? In the past Kyl rightly and justly argued for up and down votes on Bush nominees. Yet now that his party does not hold the White House he has demonstrated that he really did not believe in his righteous arguments in the past but that they were empty words used to score points and play a political game. If it was wrong for the Democrats to block Bush nominees so it is equally wrong for the Republicans to do the same. Hypocritically Kyl is now part of the group that keeps such nominees from coming to the floor of the Senate for a vote.