Obama takes stand for working people with recess appointments

Published on January 7th 2012

President Barack Obama stood up to the US Senate this week by making four "recess appointments" that Republican leaders have blocked for months with a legislative maneuver to keep the Senate technically "in session" even when no senators are actually there.

The appointments are important because all of them are leaders of agencies charged with defending the rights of consumers and working people. Obama named three members to the National Labor Relations Board, giving it a quorum and the ability to conduct business again after one member's retirement reduced the board to two members. He also named Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was created in response to the economic crisis to shield the 99 percent from further abuse by Wall Street.

Not even Senate Republicans opposed Cordray himself, but he wasn't the issue anyway, nor were the NLRB appointees. The recess appointments differed from the scores of other blocked appointments Obama could have made but didn't because "without them, the institutions they're intended to lead will fail. Obama's maneuver was about the agencies, not the appointees," wrote Ezra Klein in the Washington Post blog Wonkbook.

"This is not an accident: Republicans have straightforwardly argued that they would obstruct the confirmation of any and all nominees to the CFPB until the Obama administration agreed to radically reform the agency. They were, in other words, using their power to block nominations to kill or change agencies that they didn't have the votes to reform through the normal legislative order. Much the same has been happening at the NLRB."

Naturally, Senate Republicans were quick to denounce the president's "arrogance," even though three presidents of their own party made way more recess appointments than Obama or even Clinton ever did. Unions, however, were quick to praise the president's leadership and condemn the cynical blocking of appointments as a partisan political too:

"Working families and consumers should not pay the price for political ploys that have repeatedly undercut the enforcement of rules against Wall Street abuses and the rights of working people," said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.

"In these economic times," said SEIU President Mary Kay Henry, "shutting down or hobbling an independent federal agency charged with protecting workers' rights is simply not an option."

On a separate but related note, a "modest rule change issued today by the NLRB, that will enable workers to vote in union elections with fewer unnecessary delays, is a positive step forward," President Henry said. "The new NLRB election procedures will help ensure that workers are able to exercise a fundamental right we hold dear in our country -- the right to vote."

Calif. Progress Report: "President Sidesteps GOP Obstruction With Consumer And Workers' Rights Appointments!"