Why Are Senate Republicans Playing Dead?

[Rogue Valley]

Why Are Senate Republicans Playing Dead? | The New York Times

They’re allowing President Trump to place loyalists in important government positions.

Islamophobe retired general Anthony Tata, Trump went around the Senate with "Acting".

8/19/20
Last month, in a rare break from the White House, the Senate pushed back against the president’s nominee to the senior policy position at the Pentagon, Anthony Tata, a retired Army one-star general turned Fox News commentator. He provoked bipartisan opposition in light of a series of inflammatory tweets from 2018 (for example, he called Islam “the most oppressive violent religion”; Mr. Trump responded by installing him anyway — as the senior official “performing the duties of the deputy under secretary of defense for policy.” It’s easy to blame Mr. Trump for abusing the labyrinthine process for filling vacancies in senior executive branch positions — because he has. This administration has found every plausible loophole — and some implausible (if not unlawful) ones — to install its preferred choices in an impressively broad and important array of senior government jobs. But the real culprit for these abuses, and the principal obstacle to any meaningful reform, is the Senate — which has simply rolled over in the name of Republican Party unity as the president has run roughshod over its constitutional role. Consider Senator James Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma. Mr. Inhofe didn’t object. “I believe it is within the president’s authority to appoint D.O.D. officials when and as appropriate.”

Similar sentiments have been expressed up and down the Senate Republican caucus, from the majority leader, Mitch McConnell, to his most libertarian colleagues. It would be easy enough for the Senate to use its formidable leverage to demand that the president send in confirmable nominees for these positions. It could hold up other nominees (including for judgeships), exercise more rigorous oversight of agencies without confirmed leaders and withhold must-pass legislation. And yet, even in Mr. Tata’s case, the Senate has played dead. Even if Mr. Trump’s reliance upon acting officers does not violate the text of the Constitution (a matter of considerable debate), it certainly violates its spirit. It allows the president to administer entire departments and to impose policies that affect millions of Americans through individuals who weren’t — and, in many cases, would not have been — confirmed by the Senate. the real solution is for the Senate to do its job — not just when the president is from a different party, but when he’s on the same team, too. A Republican Senate was only too happy to assert its institutional prerogatives (at the expense of a Supreme Court seat) during a Democratic administration but has been just as happy to abandon it when a Republican sits in the Oval Office.

Donald Trump has taken advantage of, and abused, the Federal Vacancies Act of 1998. It allows a president, in an emergency (i.e. a death or terminal sickness etc), to temporarily appoint someone to run a government agency ("Acting") without Senate confirmation. Such an appointed "Acting" individual may serve for a period of 210 days. Although government agencies have "lines of succession" which denote who should be designated the "Acting", Trump ignores this and instead appoints loyalists whose only qualification for the job is that they will do exactly as Trump tells them to do and never display any disloyalty to Trump. What is boils down to is "Trump over Country". In addition, since they are not confirmed officials, many "Acting" officials feel they have no obligation to report on their activities to Congress.

 

[bluesmoke]

Why Are Senate Republicans Playing Dead? | The New York Times

They’re allowing President Trump to place loyalists in important government positions.

Islamophobe retired general Anthony Tata, Trump went around the Senate with "Acting".



Donald Trump has taken advantage of, and abused, the Federal Vacancies Act of 1998. It allows a president, in an emergency (i.e. a death or terminal sickness etc), to temporarily appoint someone to run a government agency ("Acting") without Senate confirmation. Such an appointed "Acting" individual may serve for a period of 210 days. Although government agencies have "lines of succession" which denote who should be designated the "Acting", Trump ignores this and instead appoints loyalists whose only qualification for the job is that they will do exactly as Trump tells them to do and never display any disloyalty to Trump. What is boils down to is "Trump over Country". In addition, since they are not confirmed officials, many "Acting" officials feel they have no obligation to report on their activities to Congress.

They're not playing dead. They're playing a brick wall. I guess that's "dead". Silent, but hard against any reasonable action to help save the health and economic well-being of the avg American. Why are the Congressional Dems moving like slugs to protect democracy they say is being assaulted? Such as hiding every admin "official" against Congress oversight.

 

[Redwing]

Good on Trump. Appointing haters makes no sense. There far too many of them in positions the day Trump took office.
Look at all those happy faces.

 

[ataraxia]

Good on Trump. Appointing haters makes no sense. There far too many of them in positions the day Trump took office.
Look at all those happy faces.

I’m not sure what the picture is supposed to show. It looks like they were seeing all this coming.