Thread: Obama to Appoint 'Consumer Watchdog' Czar While Congress Out of Town

President Obama to Appoint Consumer Watchdog While Congress Is Out of Town

Published January 04, 2012
| FoxNews.com


President Obama will appoint Richard Cordray to be head of a controversial consumer consumer financial protection agency despite the fact that Congress is not officially in recess.
White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer tweeted the widely expected announcement on Wednesday before the president headed out on a campaign-style event to Ohio.
"We Can't Wait: Today in Ohio, President Obama will announce the recess appointment of Consumer Watchdog Richard Cordray," he tweeted. Cordray was to appear with Obama during the official announcement in Cordray's home state.

The Constitution does not expressly forbid such an appointment, which would technically come as an intrasession posting. But the defiant move is sure to raise questions of executive power and whether the administration is overstepping its authority.
The fight also goes to the heart of the presidential reelection campaign, which aims to demonstrate Obama's leadership of a cagey economy and his effort to protect the middle class from Wall Street excesses.
With Cordray in place, the CFPB will begin to oversee the mortgage companies, payday lenders, debt collectors and other financial companies faulted for the 2008 economic meltdown.
But the move outraged Republican lawmakers.
"This is a very grave decision by this heavy-handed, autocratic White House," said Sen. orrin Hatch, R-Utah. "Circumventing the Senate and tossing out decades of precedent to appoint an unaccountable czar to appease its liberal base is beneath the Office of the President."
House Speaker John Boehner called it "an extraordinary and entirely unprecedented power grab by President Obama that defies centuries of practice and the legal advice of his own Justice Department."
But Democrats praised the president's bravado.
"With Richard Cordray leading the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Americans will finally get the consumer protections they deserve," said Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.
"Mr. Cordray is eminently qualified for the job, as even my Senate Republican colleagues have acknowledged. ... It's disappointing that Senate Republicans denied him an up-or-down vote, especially when it's clear he had the support of a majority of the Senate," he continued.
According to the Constitution, no chamber can take a break longer than three days without the consent of the other chamber. To avoid recess appointments, Republicans objected to an official recess and the Legislature went into pro-forma sessions where one lawmaker gavels in and gavels out every third day.
The belief was that this keeps the president from making recess appointments. But the White House concluded it had the authority, and is getting its biggest bang for the buck by doing it between the sessions. That way, Cordray appointment won't expire until Jan. 3, 2014.
Congress has no recourse to stop the president's action though a Republican leadership aide told Fox News that it's likely an organization affected by the Consumer Financial Protection Board may sue right away.

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This is appalling!!!! How much longer are we going to tolerate this so called President trampling our Constitution into the dirt and governing without the consent of Congress and the Courts!!!

Where is the outrage! Apparently, Congress, our elected representatives, are all sitting there saying, "Ho-Hum...Not a big deal...Just another Power Grab on the part of the Usurper...It's only for one more year...." And they are doing nothing about this????

What's next...Is this a test to see how far he can go?
Floyd Brown The White House Watch- Keeping the Watch on Obama says:

If they (Congress) don't stand up to Obama, what's next? Will Obama decree next year that the 2012 elections should be postponed or declared null and void? Will the media then tell us that he has the Constitutional power to do so?

And if you doubt that the above scenario can happen, ask yourself the following question: If Congress allows Obama to get away with this latest tyrannical usurpation of power, will more tyrannical abuses of power follow... each more egregious and far reaching than the previous?

I've had my say..