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Mitch McConnell, the Corker Bill, and the Secret to Trump’s Success — Revealed
Ace of Spades points out a GOP pattern: They construct a compromise with the White House that gives Obama all the power he requests and then pretend to vote against it, so that “they can then they go home to their districts and states and say ‘we did everything we could to stop him, but by jiminy, we just couldn’t manage it.'”
Do you remember how Mitch McConnell schemed to increase the debt limit, while suckering conservatives with a claim that conservatives voted against it?
The scheme worked like this: Congress authorized the president to increase the debt limit on his authority. (Actually, we’re already at the stage of falsehood, because he wouldn’t be raising the debt limit on his own authority, but with the authority Congress had just voted him.)
Now, the deal also granted, supposedly, Congress the power to block the raising of the debt limit, by voting a “resolution of disapproval.”
But here’s the thing: The president can veto that.
Which is what he did, of course.
So the debt limit was raised in this way:
1. Republicans voted to give Obama the power to raise the debt limit. They didn’t take responsibility for this themselves; they just said Obama could do so, if he wanted.
2. But Republicans retain the right to “block” it, supposedly, with a vote of disapproval.
3. But which Obama can veto — which every Republican knows he will do.
4. McConnell, Corker, and all the other other con artists now get to claim they didn’t raise the debt limit. Heck, they even voted a Resolution of Disapproval against it.
What they don’t tell you is that this had been designed from the start to pass the debt limit increase, with a fake Resolution of Disapproval voted on and vetoed, which had been planned from the start, so that they could lie and say they “voted against” the increase in the debt limit.
As Ace points out, Andrew McCarthy describes the same feckless abdication of responsibility in Congress’s Corker Bill strategy:
A nuclear Iran would be a threat that is similarly transformative. To know that, we need only listen to the White House tut-tutting about how “unrealistic” it would be to expect the mullahs to renounce their support for terrorism in exchange for sanctions relief. …
So Beltway Republicans are ready to put up a fight, right? About as much of a fight, it seems, as they were ready to make against mounting debt. Cravenly elevating their own political interest over the national interest, many on the GOP side of the political class calculate that it is more important to avoid blame for frustrating Obama — this time, on his delusional Iran deal — than to succeed in actually frustrating Obama.
But alas, that annoying Constitution is again an obstacle to shirking accountability. It does not empower the president to make binding agreements with foreign countries all on his own — on the theory that the American people should not take on enforceable international obligations or see their sovereignty compromised absent approval by the elected representatives most directly accountable to them.
Thus, the Constitution mandates that no international agreement can be binding unless it achieves either of two forms of congressional endorsement: a) super-majority approval by two-thirds of the Senate (i.e., 67 aye votes), or b) enactment through the normal legislative process, meaning passage by both chambers under their burdensome rules, then signature by the president.
The Corker bill is a ploy to circumvent this constitutional roadblock. That is why our post-sovereign, post-constitutional president has warmed to it. Because it would require the president to submit any Iran deal to Congress, it is drawing plaudits for toughness. But like McConnell’s debt legerdemain, it’s a con job. Once the deal is submitted, Congress would have 60 days (or perhaps as few as 30 days) to act. If within that period both houses of Congress failed to enact a resolution of disapproval, the agreement would be deemed legally binding — meaning that the sanctions the Iranian regime is chafing under would be lifted. …
To summarize, the Constitution puts the onus on the president to find 67 Senate votes to approve an international agreement, making it virtually impossible to ratify an ill-advised deal. The Corker bill puts the onus on Congress to muster 67 votes to block an agreement.
Under the Constitution, Obama’s Iran deal would not have a prayer. Under the Corker bill, it would sail through. And once again, it would be Republicans first ensuring that self-destruction is imposed on us, then striking the pose of dogged opponents by casting futile nay votes.
This is not how our system works. Congress is supposed to make the laws we live under. … That a lawless president would undertake to eviscerate these constraints is to be expected. But is he really much worse than an entrenched political class that anxiously forfeits its powers to stop him?
Or, as Jack Nicholson once said about the Ruling Class:
Published in General, Politics
And this was Goldsmith’s response. I share McCarthy’s distaste for what, in reality, Obama is trying to accomplish with this disgraceful deal but for now am persuaded Goldsmith has the better legal analysis.
McCarthy doesn’t actually knock down Goldsmith’s argument, he merely says that even though Obama may technically have the ability to do this, he shouldn’t be doing it.
Well, no one on this site disagrees that he shouldn’t be doing it, and neither does Corker. We all just acknowledge that he can’t be stopped from doing it unless there is the political will to make a case for impeachment. But there is no will to do so. And if there were, it would merely be an act of political will that carried the day rather than one of legal requirement.
I believe Andy McCarthy wrote a book making the case that impeachment was a political rather than a legal act.
Right, so basically everyone denouncing Corker is really saying that we should be starting impeachment proceedings. I think that is complete idiocy and political suicide for the GOP, but I don’t begrudge anyone the right to champion that approach. What annoys me is that those who want to denounce Corker aren’t being plain that impeachment is what they are proposing as an alternative. They never seem very forthcoming about what they really want the GOP leadership to actually do. They would rather just whine and call McConnell and Boehner names.
There are other avenues too, but they all involve confrontation. For example, the Senate could hold up all appointments until the treaty is submitted for ratification. They won’t do that either.
That wouldn’t stop the deal from being implemented. Without the Corker bill, Obama could have already started implementing the provisions. Sure, the GOP could cause some annoyances for Obama, but none of the annoyances would remove or block the executive authority Obama already has to continue giving Iran everything the administration agreed to.
McConnell is shrugging his shoulders and saying, “I did all I could. What else could we do?” Well, some of those things are political, like blocking appointments. McConnell should be honest and say he doesn’t think this is important enough to warrant using those tools. Instead, he pretends his hands are tied to get the base off his back.
But blocking appointments and whatever else wouldn’t stop anything. Obama is willing to do whatever it takes and take whatever political fallout he has to to make this deal happen. Impeachment is the only thing that will stop this. To pretend that pissing into the wind shows some type of political courage rather than highlighting your impotence is just foolish and immature.
I guess it depends on what is meant “do,” make a statement or stop implementation of the deal.
I can accept the argument that Congress couldn’t stop President Obama before the Corker bill because they already delegated authority to him with previous legislation. As for Goldsmith’s second point:
Failures yesterday are not an excuse for failure today. Is this another scenario in which we are being asked to wait for Republicans to gain total control of all branches of government before anything be done?
Authority is meaningless if a President can define the limits of his own authority. If it is the responsibility of the Judicial branch to distinguish treaties from lesser actions, then it is the responsibility of Congress to bring that case to the courts. In any case, the responsibility to defend the constraints of the Constitution does not belong to the Judicial alone.
Basically, this is about the gradual centralization of power under the Executive branch over the past century. That corruption has not been stymied by Republican lawyers like John Yoo.
I’m not sure that is the case. This is an example of the President using executive power and all it would take is a Republican president to change. Control of the Congress would be irrelevant.
This is a political not legal question. I do not believe courts have a role.
Presidents do have inherent Article II power, especially with regard to foreign affairs. That is a feature of the Constiturion, not a bug.
Pseudo
Don’t forget the fiasco of the Vitter Amendment. It happened prior to the elections of 2014, but McConnell engineered with Harry Reid the same trick: voting against a special exemption for themselves and their staffs from Obamacare once they knew it wouldn’t pass.
Heads they win, tails we lose.
I was with klaatu until the new Congress got in and then immediately gave in on the Obama amnesty. Now it is all about destroying the GOP for me.