• ThunderingJerboa@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I mean term limits aren’t going to fix the problem. They arguably may make them far worse. It then just becomes a job of tactically making sure you secure the election of the executive branch and senate. With senate being the most important since if senate sits on their hands you sort of get a “Scalia situation”. Where there will just be an empty seat until you get executive and senate to agree on a candidate.

      • ThunderingJerboa@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Yes but no. I’ll elaborate, there is a concept called a recess appointment where if senate is on recess (which they do twice a year) where the president can fill in a temp until the end of their next session however National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning (2014) basically has allowed the concept of pro forma session as a valid way to disrupt a recess. So what is a pro forma session it is basically a session of senate where the President Pro Tempore (Longest running senator who handles procedure) delegates their job to a singular senator who then calls the session to an end and repeat this every 3 days and bing bang boom. You have a senate who is not on recess but is taking a break

        So in a 5-4 vote, they dictated

        “for purposes of the Recess Appointments Clause, the Senate is in session when it says it is, provided that, under its own rules, it retains the capacity to transact Senate business.”

        So while there is technically a system to fill vacant government positions, it has been basically loopholed out of the equation since 2014.