Quote:
Originally Posted by Rochard
It does't make any sense. Bush did this 171 times and no one said a thing. Obama did this 32 times and it's a massive legal issue.
Why didn't anyone say anything when Bush was President?
The problem here is these agencies need someone in charge to run them. It takes months to select and vet potential candidates, and then Congress dicks around and before you know it very important government agencies do not have a director for six months at a time. Congress needs to do it's job, not file lawsuits to make it look like they are doing their job.
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The issue isn't how many times it was done, but in this case the circumstances surrounding it.
The republicans knew that Obama would likely do recess appointments during the holiday break so they decided to try to stop him from doing that (up until then they had carried out an historical number of filibusters against his appointees so they knew these recess appointments were coming). They carried out a procedure called a pro-forma session. This allowed for just a few Senators to show up and take roll call. They didn't do anything, but since they showed up they claimed it was a legit session and therefore there was no recess so Obama couldn't carry out his recess appointments. Obama and his legal team disagreed (there was no real legal precedence for this) and carried out three appointments. Pepsico sued Obama because they didn't like one of the people he appointed. They claimed that he illegally appointed this person using a recess appointment when their was no recess. Eventually the case made its way through the system and the Supreme Court ruled against Obama.