Sorry, folks, I’ve been behind in the blogging this past week, and thus I’m tardy in posting the video of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid‘s appearance on Meet the Press discussing his support of President Barack Obama‘s recess appointments to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the National Labor Relations Board.
As you may have heard, the appointments are controversial, inasmuch as the Senate hasn’t really been on recess. Using a tactic that Reid himself invented back in 2007, the Senate has been meeting in short “pro forma” sessions to ensure the president can’t make recess appointments. But Reid abandons his previous support for presidential appointment-blocking, as shown in the clip below.
(BTW, Meet the Press has a really cool new set, don’t you think?)
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Comment too short? What is wrong with being succinct?
What makes this situation different is not Obama’s overuse of the recess appointment; it’s the Republicans getting called on an attempted nullification of duly-enacted law. This agency was created via bipartisan votes, is supported by a majority of Americans, and as enacted, should have been functioning long before now. The Congressional GOP has been trying to prevent the agency from doing what it was intended, and is legally authorized to do, by procedurally denying it the Directorship it needs.
I wish I had kept the name of the Congressman and his exact quote when he was interviewed (while on recess). It went something on the order of. “We are not in recess and will fight this battle when we get back.” The interviewee failed to ask, “Get back from what?” (And he was, actually, on recess).