Giving the Finger to the GOP

Last year the Congress passed a bill establishing a protection board for consumers, designed to act as a watchdog over the loan sharks who are currently running the nation's banks, credit card companies and payday loan shops. The President signed it into law over the objections of the Republican caucus.

The GOP hatched a cunning plan: They would block every attempt by the President to nominate a head of this board. This would, in effect, nullify the law.

At the same time, the need was urgent to name three more members of the National Labor Relations board. And, sure enough, every time a name was put forward the GOP Senate Caucus would filibuster it. This paralyzes the NLRB, since they only had two members and couldn't make any binding decisions (a quorum was required, at least three members).

Stymied by the intransigence of the GOP, President Obama waited.

Until yesterday.

Exercising his authority under Article II, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution (the supreme law of the land, just to remind you), President Obama made four recess appointments - the head of the CFPB and three members of the NLRB. I think they start on Monday.

The GOP is foaming at the mouth at this, but you have to recall that Obama's a Constitutional lawyer by education and training, so in this case I think he's on safe ground here. You can expect a lot of screeching about "abuse of power" and "power grab" and "ignoring the Congress," but the crux of it is this:

If the GOP wants to actually work and earn their pay, they need to stop their mulish and quite frankly infantile behavior.