Obama's Latest Mockery of the Constitution

This week, Obama appointed Richard Cordray to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That's not the problem.

The problem is that this appointment is supposedly a "recess appointment." Recess appointments are a loophole that enables the president to avoid the constitutional requirement for top governmental and judicial appointees to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Recess appointments are only constitutionally permissible if Congress is in "recess." Congress is not in "recess" this week, according to the criteria set forth by Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution and its explanation in past Justice Department briefs. Congress is legally in session, and therefore Obama is not eligible to make recess appointments. But he did it anyway.

This is an open mockery of our Constitution -- and an unprecedented one. Back in 2007, Congress stayed in session for over a year to keep President Bush from making recess appointments. At one point, Congress was called into session for just 27 seconds to prevent such recess appointments. Because President Bush respected the Constitution and the rule of law, he did not make an illegal recess appointment. Now we have a president who doesn't care.

There's a reason the Constitution set up these checks and balances regarding presidential appointments. We live in a constitutional republic with division of powers between three branches of government. The whole point of the "advice and consent" Senate role is to keep the President accountable and ensure that his appointments are broadly acceptable to the public. If the President has the right to ignore such constitutional requirements altogether, he is setting himself above the law.

Obama's new appointee, Richard Cordray, will have tremendous power to influence the economy. The new Financial Consumer Protection Bureau can regulate any and every consumer transaction in this country. Because it is funded out of the Federal Reserve, it has no accountability to Congress. And now all power in this bureau is vested in one individual rather than in a five-member board (which was the original intent when this bureau was set up). Congress was trying to avoid this situation, where one unaccountable bureaucrat was running a powerful unaccountable agency, so it deliberately stayed in session to try to force reforms. Little did they know that Obama would trample on Constitutional and historical precedent to get his way.

People need to know what Obama is doing. The press is not reporting this accurately. CNN's headline is "Obama Recess Appoints Consumer Bureau Chief." You have to read deep into the lengthy article to even find out that Congress is not in recess, so therefore this cannot be a recess appointment. This illegal appointment by Obama continues his past history of avoiding Senate advice and consent by appointing an unprecedented number of powerful, unaccountable czars.

We need a President who respects the Constitution. Right now, we don't have one.