“Dereliction Of Duty”: In The Military, One Gets Court Martialed; In Congress, One Gets Re-Elected
According to the Brookings Institution there are some 47,000 unaccompanied children in the USA from Central America, almost all of whom arrived this year. There is no question that the numbers have overwhelmed an already out-of-date system and there is no question, or should not be any question, about our responsibility to care for these children while our legal process takes its course and they are either deported or granted asylum.
But now Congress, which has been the most grid-locked Congress in history, is about to adjourn for the rest of the summer without taking the actions necessary to assure that these children are cared for and that their legal process is managed properly and efficiently.
This nation has always been built on compromise. This nation became a beacon to the entire world because we had a legislative process that worked. This nation grew great and strong because we elected people to “GOVERN” and to “REPRESENT THE BEST INTERESTS OF ALL AMERICANS.” Now all of this has been thrown out the window and our system is absolutely derelict in its duty to our people, our principles and our heritage.
Maybe I am a heretic — I have been called worse — but I do not care if you are a Democrat or Republican, I do not care if you are an arch liberal or a Tea Party conservative, there are 47,000 children languishing in this country without proper care, without beds to sleep in, without medical attention or schooling. Now, 435 Representatives and 100 Senators are leaving for vacation where they will party, sun themselves, drink too much and eat some of the best food available…all while these 47,000 children languish.
Shame on all of you!
You have abdicated your right to be called “legislators.” You should be called “abdicators” for that is what you are.
In the military one gets court martialed for dereliction of duty, but in Congress one gets re-elected for another term. It is time for the American people on all sides of the aisle to speak up and tell these overpaid abdicators that they dare not leave Washington until they take care of these children!
By: Harry Leibowitz, World of Children Award Co-Founder & Board Chair; The Huffington Post Blog, July 29, 2014
“A Partisan Axe To Grind”: An ‘Unfortunate Political Stunt’ Goes Awry
Earlier this year, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) thought he’d come up with a great idea: he’d file a lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act in the hopes of making coverage more expensive for Capitol Hill staff. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, a Republican from Johnson’s home state of Wisconsin, conceded the senator’s lawsuit was “frivolous” and an “unfortunate political stunt.”
Yesterday, in a development that was arguably even more important than it appears at first blush, a federal judge threw out the case.
A federal judge based in Green Bay has tossed a Sen. Ron Johnson’s Obamacare lawsuit targeting the health benefits for members of Congress and their staff.
The court dismissed the lawsuit, which contended the Obama administrations decision to grant employer contributions for health plans purchased through the District of Columbia’s Obamacare health exchange ran afoul of the law.
Chief Judge William C. Griesbach of the Eastern District of Wisconsin ruled that Johnson and fellow plaintiff Brooke Ericson lacked standing, siding with the argument made by the government’s lawyers.
The hurdle for Johnson’s lawyers was always going to be difficult to clear: how would the Republican senator demonstrate he’d been harmed by the health care policy he doesn’t like? Remember, when filing a lawsuit challenging the legality of a law, plaintiffs can’t just say, “I don’t like it.” They need to show how they’ve been adversely affected by it.
Johnson couldn’t, so his case was dismissed. But this is more than just a setback for one Republican senator with a partisan axe to grind; this is also likely the start of things to come for the GOP’s anti-Obama litigation.
Let’s not forget that in April, Johnson not only had high hopes for his case, he also had the enthusiastic support of his Republican colleagues. As we talked about at the time, 38 GOP senators signed onto a legal brief, urging the courts to rule in Johnson’s favor.
As these lawmakers saw it, they were fighting for the preservation of the republic. “The unlawful executive action at issue in this case is not an isolated incident,” the brief said. “Rather, it is part of an ongoing campaign by the executive branch to rewrite the Affordable Care Act on a wholesale basis.”
The courts must side with Johnson, the GOP lawmakers’ brief added, because the administration’s campaign “threatens to subvert the most basic precept of our system of government.”
It was, to be sure, a dumb and overdramatic argument. But more important, it also failed miserably – a federal judge ruled late yesterday that without standing to argue the case, far-right lawmakers will have to pursue their preservation of the republic in some other way.
One wonders if House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) took note of the developments.
As for the underlying policy issue, a little background is probably in order. Johnson argued that Democrats came up with a congressional subsidy in the ACA “once members realized how harmful Obamacare actually was.” That was brazenly false.
In reality, the law includes a provision that says members of Congress and their staffs have to sign up for coverage through an exchange. This became tricky because the exchange marketplaces were designed primarily for the uninsured, but Republicans said they wanted this in the law, so it’s in there.
But the story got a little more complicated when the Office of Personnel Management had to decide whether lawmakers and their staffs should also receive the same employer subsidy as everyone else, or whether everyone on Capitol Hill should face higher costs just because they work on Capitol Hill. OPM, with the blessing of the House Republican leadership, said lawmakers and aides can keep the same employer subsidy and play by the same rules as everyone else.
And that’s why Johnson sued – he wanted Capitol Hill employees to pay more for health care because it would make the right feel better. As of yesterday, the argument is a bust.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, July 22, 2014
“An Inept Congress”: Two Years After Aurora, Where’s The Gun Reform?
It’s been two years since the tragic Aurora, Colorado theater shooting, which killed 12 people and injured 70. But although many politicians, including President Obama, vowed that the nation would finally do something to strengthen gun regulations, Congress still hasn’t passed a single gun control law since. In fact, Congress hasn’t passed any major gun reform since 1994’s Assault Weapons Ban, which expired 10 years ago.
That doesn’t mean that nothing has changed, however. Months later, after the Newtown elementary school shooting in December 2012, the president set up a task force to address the issue. He promised to send Congress proposals for strengthening gun control, and he urged lawmakers to ban assault weapons, pass a universal background check law, and limit high-capacity ammunition clips.
He then signed 23 executive orders into law in January 2013. These included reducing barriers to background checks, researching the causes of gun violence, and improving mental health services. As Forbes explained at the time, “It does not appear that any of the executive orders would have any impact on the guns people currently own – or would like to purchase – and that all proposals regarding limiting the availability of assault weapons or large ammunition magazines will be proposed for congressional action.”
In other words, Congress still needed to act. In April 2013, the Senate voted to expand the background check system, a reform that 90 percent of Americans supported. But the amendment failed to to gain the 60 votes it needed to advance, due to pressure from the National Rifle Association and the lack of support from some red-state Democrats such as North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp.
President Obama called the vote “a shameful day in Washington.”
Obama took two more executive actions in August 2013. He banned military weapons that the United States had sold or given to allies from being imported back into the country. These weapons, however, are rarely used at crime scenes.
The president also attempted to close a loophole that allows felons and anyone else who can’t legally purchase a gun to register firearms to a corporation. The new rule requires anyone associated with that corporation to go through a background check. But that rule only applies to guns regulated under the National Firearms Act, which only regulates very deadly weapons such as machine guns.
Meanwhile, Congress still hasn’t passed any major gun legislation. The only step in the right direction was in May 2014, when the House passed an amendment that would increase funding for the country’s background check system.
In June, 163 House Democrats wrote an open letter to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), asking him to allow a vote on legislation to address gun violence. If he doesn’t allow a vote, it could resurface as a major issue in the midterms.
Even though there hasn’t been substantive national action to reduce gun violence, some states have taken gun control into their own hands.
Colorado’s state legislature passed laws that required universal background checks and limited gun magazines to 15 rounds of ammunition. Two Democratic state senators were recalled shortly thereafter, in an effort that was heavily supported by the NRA.
New York also passed new gun control and mental health laws. Other states have improved their background check systems, limited magazine capacity, and worked to prevent the mentally ill from accessing guns.
According to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 64 laws have strengthened state gun regulations since the Newtown shootings, and 70 laws have weakened them.
By: Rachel Witkin, The National Memo, July 18, 2014
“The Faux Faith Of Congress”: Wasting Valuable Time By Pushing Unneeded And Sectarian Legislation
Members of Congress regularly boost their reelection prospects in positive ways like voting in line with the will of their district and participating in the passage of landmark legislation. But we know all too well that they also engage in negative campaigning, lambasting their political opponents and even scapegoating minorities for problems that we must grapple with as a community. Another pernicious habit that appears to be getting more prevalent is the attempt to co-opt religious belief for political benefit.
Some of the many examples include a resolution to reaffirm “In God We Trust” as the national motto and endorse its usage in all public buildings, public schools and other government institutions, and a resolution expressing support for prayer at school board meetings. And just this week Congress passed a bill, the World War II Memorial Prayer Act of 2013, which will place a plaque at the World War II monument in Washington, D.C., “with the words that President Franklin D. Roosevelt prayed with the United States on June 6, 1944, the morning of D-Day.”
The prayer being referred to here mentions how “[o]ur sons … this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization.” While some soldiers may have been doing just that, there were certainly other soldiers who did not believe in a god, did not share the same religion, or simply weren’t fighting to preserve it.
Most government officials are well aware that working on these bills is a waste of valuable time since they accomplish little more than alienating Americans who subscribe to minority faiths and philosophies. In fact, there are many important bills that still await passage, such as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (which would prevent discrimination against employees based on their sexual orientation or gender identity) and legislation that would raise the minimum wage. But as some Americans admit that the religious beliefs of a candidate impact their vote, many politicians see no downside to embellishing the importance of their faith and engaging in religious preferentialism.
It is important to note that there are politicians who categorically refuse to endorse religiously motivated bills or other pieces of legislation that would weaken the separation between church and state. And, of course, there are some evangelical “true believers” who genuinely wish to see their religious tenets enshrined into law no matter how it impacts the rights of others. But both of these types of politicians are in the minority.
Unfortunately, the politicians whose religious credentials run only skin-deep have yet to be called out for co-opting their beliefs for political gain, which means that this practice of pushing unneeded and sectarian legislation won’t end anytime soon. What’s needed is for average Americans to stand up and not accept their false declarations of religiosity, respond negatively to their religious pandering, and insist that they instead focus on what actually matters.
It’s past time that this shameful act is ended, before government institutions become even more reviled by an American public that recognizes how Congress is increasingly inefficient and disconnected from the issues they care about. Instead of disingenuously emphasizing beliefs that seem to help politicians in the short term but estrange Americans from their neighbors, Congress should put aside their faux faith once and for all.
By: Roy Speckhardt, The Huffington Post Blog, June 27, 2014
“So When Is The Senate In Recess?”: An Extended Recess Broken Up By Several Pro Forma Sessions Is Still A Recess
Before the Circuit Court went all activist in the Canning case, everyone thought the question was defining what counted as a “recess.” On that issue, the Supreme Court had a clear answer today: “For purposes of the Recess Appointments Clause, the Senate is in session when it says that it is, provided that, under its own rules, it retains the capacity to transact Senate business.”
That’s a nominal defeat for President Barack Obama, who had claimed that an extended recess broken up by several pro forma sessions is still a recess.
The history here is that a Senate with a Democratic majority used pro forma sessions every three days in 2007-2008 to prevent President George W. Bush from making recess appointments, and Bush didn’t contest the maneuver. Then, in 2011, the Republican majority in the House of Representatives tried the same workaround, which forced the Senate to stay “in session” because of the constitutional provision that when one chamber is in session, the other cannot adjourn for “more than three days.”
The Senate-initiated attempt to block recess appointments seemed dicey, but probably reasonable. The House-initiated obstruction, however, was constitutionally noxious. After all, the House has no constitutional role in presidential nominations. By refusing to recess, the Senate essentially is enforcing its role in advise and consent. That changes when lawmakers hold pro forma sessions instead of “real” sessions and enforce that role at their convenience. When the House does it, however, that chamber is being inserted into matters it has no business being involved in.
The court didn’t differentiate those two very different situations today, but Associate Justice Stephen Breyer reminded everyone that there is another option for combating the House: The Constitution allows the president to act if the two chambers cannot agree on adjournment. Although I argued strongly at the time that Democrats shouldn’t allow the House to veto nominations — and that therefore Obama should have acted — I believed that the unused Article II power of adjournment was the safest constitutional ground.
As it turns out, the House option is pretty much a moot question since Senate Democrats pushed through the nuclear option, which allows nominations to go through with a simple majority vote. The House option for obstruction was relevant only in cases in which the president and Senate majority were from one party, and the House majority and a Senate minority large enough to kill nominations by filibuster were from the other party. Given simple majority confirmation, the House no longer has the power to obstruct. I suppose it’s still true that a president and the Senate majority might prefer a simple recess appointment to going through the hurdles of confirmation, even if it’s guaranteed to happen, but that’s not as big a deal as the attempt to nullify entire agencies by the House in conjunction with a Senate minority.
To be sure, the Senate will still have the ability to refuse to confirm any nominee and to prevent recess appointments. But that was always going to be the case; the only thing at stake here (on the narrow question of what counts as a recess) was how inconvenient it was going to be for the Senate to do so. In the long term, odds are that future legislation will be written more carefully to prevent nullification by obstructing nominations, now that Republicans have revealed that such a weapon is available and will be used. Constitutionally, none of that is a big deal.
To get into the details, the question of what counts as a “recess” is complicated because the Constitution doesn’t offer a definition, and usage now and then is ambiguous. Both Breyer and Associate Justice Antonin Scalia discussed two meanings (recess between two sessions of Congress and recess within one session). But, in fact, there are three usages: everyone in and around Congress knows that “recess” can mean both short periods when Congress is out for a weekend, the night, or even lunch, or it can mean the longer “district work periods” that last for a week (with surrounding weekends) or longer. Without explaining it very well and therefore opening himself up to Scalia’s claims that it’s just an arbitrary ruling, Breyer is basically attempting to follow that perfectly common-sense, ordinary usage distinction. That is the correct way to go; it’s the only option that really conforms to Senate practice.
That leaves the question about the pro forma sessions. Breyer puts a fair amount of weight on the ability of the Senate to transact business (by unanimous consent, or presumably by a voice vote if it wasn’t challenged) during these sessions. That’s true, but it’s also true that everyone talks and acts as if the Senate is in a normal recess during those periods. So the court has erred, but it’s a close call, and relatively little is at stake in this portion of the decision, especially in the post-nuclear era.
By: Jonathan Bernstein, Ten Miles Square, Washington Monthly, June 27, 2014
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