Reasonable people can disagree about the Founders’ purpose behind the Recess Appointments Clause of the Constitution. Some believe it provides the president a way to circumvent an obstructive Senate; others believe it was included to provide for the continuity of government during Senate absences.
What is not up for debate is the fact that forcing the taxpayers to pay the salaries of individuals that hold views counter to those held by the general public is not only wrong, it is deplorable.
Yet last year, President Obama used the recess appointment process to circumvent the vote of 52 duly elected U.S. senators to install Craig Becker on the National Labor Relations Board.
Prior to that time, Becker was a trial lawyer for the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union, where he argued that Obama could implement “card check” through regulatory fiat and that employers should not be able to contest union elections even when there is obvious evidence of tampering.
Since his recess appointment, Becker has famously decided that companies cannot close a union factory in order to open a nonunion factory.
Becker’s appointment showed House Republican freshmen that we had to halt this blatant abuse of the recess appointment process. However, as everyone who has taken eighth-grade civics knows, appointments are the purview of the Senate, not the House.
Luckily, the Founders put a few “kill switches” in our Constitution for the House to utilize when the Senate’s advice and consent is circumvented by a hostile president.
House Republican freshmen are employing these kill switches to initiate a multipart campaign against Obama’s ability to make recess appointments.
First, 77 of us sent a letter instructing House leadership to use the power provided to the House by Article 1, Section 5 to not consider or approve Senate adjournment resolutions.
By not considering adjournment resolutions, we keep the Senate in session and deprive the president of the opportunity to make recess appointments.
Our efforts are working. When we started, Obama intended to utilize his recess appointment power to install Elizabeth Warren as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
However, due to our efforts, the Senate has not gone into recess and Obama has announced he will no longer appoint Warren to this position.
As a side effect of our efforts, the Senate refuses to consider House adjournment resolutions. As a result, the House must meet in pro forma session at least once every three days.
Again, Republican freshmen — along with Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Jordan — are answering the bell, agreeing to interrupt their August breaks to preside over these pro forma sessions.
The second phase of our campaign is an appropriation amendment that prevents the abuse of the recess appointment process by halting the salary of recess appointees if the vacancy they are filling existed before the recess during which they were appointed.
Thus, we provide for the continuity of government but prevent the taxpayers from paying the salaries of objectionable appointees.
We have already had this amendment adopted in one appropriations bill and — as a freshman class — will continue offering it to every appropriations bill that comes up, preventing all abuses of the recess appointment process from being paid next year.
This amendment mirrored a rider issued to the 1864 Army Appropriations Act. During consideration of that rider, Sen. William Fessenden, R-Maine, said: “It may not be in our power to prevent the appointment, but it is in our power to prevent the payment; and when the payment is prevented, I think that will probably put an end to the habit of making such appointments.”
If our efforts to halt Senate recesses and the pay of recess appointees somehow fail to stop this president from making recess appointments, I promise you, House freshmen have already developed more legislative and procedural maneuvers to stop recess appointees.
As I said, responsible people can disagree about the Founders’ intent, but no one thinks the taxpayers should have to pay the price for these discussions.
Rep. Jeff Landry is a freshman Republican who represents Louisiana’s 3rd Congressional District.
