President Obama misses chance to make recess appointments

During the recess, the President has a number of opportunities to make recess appointments. He could simply determine that the pro forma sessions being used to keep Congress active were insufficient to prevent recess appointments. He could use his Constitutional power to adjourn Congress. But both of those would fly in the face of recent precedent (Presidents have generally respected the pro forma process, and no President has actually used the adjournment power.

The one option with Presidential precedent behind it was the “Roosevelt precedent.” Congress simply has to adjourn for a short period, a split second really, to shift from the first session of the 112th Congress to the second session. In that window, Theodore Roosevelt made hundreds of recess appointments previously. I was under the impression that the Roosevelt precedent wouldn’t get an opportunity until the Senate actually came back into session. But Brian Beutler reports that, no, today was actually the window for the Roosevelt precedent. And the President declined to use it.

Today was the day that legal experts and many aides in both parties thought President Obama would provide a recess appointment to Richard Cordray, his nominee to administer the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau [...]

But a senior administration official who would not be quoted told reporters at a White House background briefing Tuesday that Obama will not take advantage of that opening.

The official declined to provide further explanation, but the decision implies one of three things: that Obama does not believe he’s encumbered by technical restrictions on his power to recess appoint nominees and can still act between now and late January when Senators return to town; that he will instead wait until a future recess when feels he has more running room and political capital to recess appoint Cordray and others; or that he has no intention of challenging Congressional Republicans by making further recess appointments between now and the end of this Congress.

I’m thinking the latter. The Roosevelt precedent would be the least aggressive of the possibilities here, because past Presidents at least took advantage of the option. Ignoring pro forma sessions or adjourning Congress would set new precedent, and I just don’t see this President having an interest in doing that.

So the CFPB nominee sits languishing, and the agency still cannot regulate non-bank financial institutions. And everyone waits for a President willing to fight obstructionist fire with fire.

Def. Sec. Leon Panetta can't fund enough wars

Leon Panetta has sketched out his vision for an “austerity” military, which only spends slightly less than every country on Earth does on their militaries combined, rather than more. Keep in mind that this reflects the cuts from the spending cap version of the debt limit deal, not the trigger cuts which would reduce another $500-$600 billion from Pentagon budgets over 10 years. Panetta remains staunchly opposed to those cuts and wants to see them eliminated.

The “austerity” military would only be able to fight one ground war at a time, and if America cannot fight multiple ground wars at once, we might as well turn in our superpower badge, right?

In a shift of doctrine driven by fiscal reality and a deal last summer that kept the United States from defaulting on its debts, Mr. Panetta is expected to outline plans for carefully shrinking the military — and in so doing make it clear that the Pentagon will not maintain the ability to fight two sustained ground wars at once.

Instead, he will say that the military will be large enough to fight and win one major conflict, while also being able to “spoil” a second adversary’s ambitions in another part of the world while conducting a number of other smaller operations, like providing disaster relief or enforcing a no-flight zone.

Pentagon officials, in the meantime, are in final deliberations about potential cuts to virtually every important area of military spending: the nuclear arsenal, warships, combat aircraft, salaries, and retirement and health benefits. With the war in Iraq over and the one in Afghanistan winding down, Mr. Panetta is weighing how significantly to shrink America’s ground forces.

Under this plan, the Pentagon budget would be roughly the same size as it was in Fiscal Year 2007, when we did not seem to lack for military capacity to meet threats.

The ideal would be if reductions in Pentagon budgets freed up money to use for more productive purposes, like on building infrastructure or other domestic social programs. But those are not in the cards, as the spending cap covers all discretionary spending. So the “austerity” military, while not a problem from a national security perspective, reflects a larger problem with austerity budgeting which will begin to take a bite out of GDP in FY2013.

Meanwhile, I would imagine that Panetta will paint a picture of a barely hanging-on military with the first round of cuts, to depict the trigger cuts as unacceptable. The truth is that previous drawdowns of wars in Korea and Vietnam, and even the Cold War, saw larger reductions in the size of the military. We can manage what would amount to a $1 trillion reduction in military budgets over ten years, as Barney Frank and Ron Paul promoted last year.

The problem lies in how Panetta will likely manage the cuts, by sacrificing retirement and health benefits for veterans to save outdated weapons systems. Even those who favor drastically reduced military spending should be mindful of the details, where some bloated defense contractor boondoggle stays, but co-pays go up on TRICARE benefits for veterans who had no say in authorizing war. And what gets done with the Overseas Contingency budget, which funds current wars, is crucial, as in recent years that has been used as a slush fund to fill in gaps in military spending, rather than for its intended purpose.

The proposed cuts, incidentally, still have to come into contact with Congress and the budgeting process, so you could see a lot more changes, mostly for the worse, after that.

Global Revolution is issued a notice to vacate or be subject to arrest.

Global Revolution, the team that has been doing media coverage for Occupy Wall Street since the first day of occupation, has been evicted from space it had in Brooklyn. The group was evicted from the building they were using by NYPD for “safety reasons,” however, other individuals using the building were not told to “vacate.”

A notice to vacate posted reads:

The Department of Buildings has determined that conditions in this premises are imminently perilous to life.

This premises has been vacated and reentry is prohibited until such conditions have been eliminated to the satisfaction of the department.

Violators of this commissioner’s vacate order are subject to arrest.

Further details have not been reported by anyone on Twitter at this point (though members of the crew have been talking about the eviction on the Global Revolution livestream). It would be nice to know the legal justification for ordering one group but not all groups inside the building to vacate. When more is reported, the blog will be updated with details on the eviction.

Here is a video that has been posted on the eviction:

Additionally, today in New York (and possibly at other occupations around the country?), Occupy Wall Street will be engaging in an emergency demonstration against the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) recently signed into law, which grants the military “extraordinary powers to detain citizens without trial.”

The New York City General Assembly declares on their website:

January 3rd will be a spontaneous show of people power in reaction to Obama’s treasonous signing of the National Defense Authorization Act. Not only does this act violate our first, third, fourth, fifth and sixth amendments, as well as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, but this Act was signed quietly this past New Years Eve violating what little trust remained between the people and their established government. We see what’s happening here, and we will not stand for it.

They post a schedule for what is planned for the “Day of Action”:

7:30AM (All Day) – OWS solidarity with the New York State Nurses Association Strike at St. Lukes (1111 Amsterdam Ave and 112th Street) and Roosevelt Hospital (1000 10th Ave and 59th Street.)
12PM – Press Conference at NYPL (Bryant Park)
2PM – Office Demonstration at Senator Gillibrand’s office (780 3rd Ave.)
3PM – Office Demonstration at Senator Schumer’s office (757 3rd Ave.)
4PM – Rally at Rockefeller Plaza
5PM – Flash check about NDAA in Grand Central for commuters.
After, we plan to march up 5th ave to do a demo tour of 1 percent homes.
(above subject to change at on short notice.)

Finally, the Iowa Caucus is today. There will likely be quite a bit of Occupy protest action. It will be interesting to see how many Iowans, actually vote “uncommitted” and if those votes are even counted and reported.

Firedoglake’s premier live blog continues now. It will follow NDAA protests and all Occupy the Iowa Caucus activity today. All times are EST. Updates will appear at the top of the post. Email kevin.gosztola@firedoglake.com with any news tips, questions or updates.

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