Obama's Lawless Bureaucracy Now Trying To Deliver an Unconstitutional Advantage to Big Labor

A "rule" -- written by unelected bureaucrats -- proposes that a vote on unionization must occur quickly after the union's request of such.

Those in business and labor are expecting a vote in the Senate, perhaps as early as next week, on a joint resolution for congressional disapproval that would block the regulation. A Senate Republican leadership aide told The Hill that a vote on the measure was expected sometime over the next two weeks.

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Business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce oppose the rule, which would speed up union elections. Glenn Spencer, vice president of the Chamber’s Workforce Freedom Initiative, has said in the past that a vote on the joint resolution is likely the most significant labor vote this congressional session.

“This vote is coming soon, and it’s the Senate's opportunity to tell the board that it has gone too far,” Spencer told The Hill.

Why is Obama's bureaucracy pushing this?

Because a union might be campaigning for unionization a year before they ask for a vote. If they ask for a snap election, the company has no time to lobby against it.

Lou Dobbs was just discussing this on Fox. When a vote is taken 11 to 15 days after the request, the unions win almost 90% of votes.

When a vote is taken 36-44 days, unions win less than 60% of the votes.

So obviously the quickie vote is in the unions' favor.

Is it in the company's favor? No, of course not.

Is it in the worker's favor? No -- because workers, armed with more information (the argument by the company against the union) make different decisions than they do when they make hasty ones.

Obama's new rule, then, has a main intent of denying important, decision-affecting information to workers.

It's also unconstitutional for a federal bureaucracy to make new law.

Here's a brief digest of the history of executive law-making:

In the beginning, the Congress wrote and passed all laws. There were no federal bureaucratic "regulations" -- Congress had to specify what was permitted and what was impermissible.

As the national government grew larger, with more fingers in every pie, Congress discovered it could not possibly keep up with the myriad micro-laws -- "regulations" -- they had to write. Like, if they passed a law that trucks traveling on the interstate highway system had to have pollution controls, well, what level of carbon monoxide production was permitted?

They began empowering a federal agency to write the actual law -- which they called "regulations" -- while Congress just wrote the big-picture main thrust of it, and then delegated rule-making power to the executive branch.

This was challenged as far as constitutionality. Congress cannot delegate a power to the executive that the Constitution says lies with -- and must lie with -- Congress itself.

But the Supreme Court permitted this "regulatory state" by creating a distinction between "law" -- which only Congress can pass, as the Constitution says -- and mere "rule," a minor bit of specification in support of the law Congress passed.

There's a lot of mischief exploitable here, obviously.

But to the extent this law/rule distinction makes sense it surely must mean that a "rule" which shifts the balance of power dramatically between citizens cannot in any twisted sense be called a "rule," but must be called a "law" requiring the regular Constitutional practice of a majority vote in Congress.

You cannot override the inconvenient Congress by simply making every law you can't pass into a "rule" that unelected bureaucrats write up and enact into law on their own nonexistent authority.

Lawmaking is supposed to be inconvenient. It's supposed to take some effort. It's supposed to be exposed to the process of blocs of competing interests lobbying one way or the other and Representatives, accountable to their constituents, voting one way or the other.

We cannot, even if we wished (and we should not wish) to delegate the power reserved to Congress, in trust of The People, to unelected bureaucrats in the executive branch.

Now, even though Congress may vote on a joint resolution to block this-- and this cannot be filibustered in the Senate -- it still requires The President's signature to block the rule:

Under the Congressional Review Act, the joint resolution cannot be filibustered and can pass the Senate with a simple majority of 51 votes.

Despite not needing 60 votes in the Senate, it is still a difficult road forward for the joint resolution since it will need Democratic votes to pass. Further, to overturn the rule, the joint resolution would have to be signed by President Obama, who has received labor backing for his reelection bid, after it had passed in both the House and the Senate.

Note how ass-backwards this all is: You don't need any such Constitutional dignities to pass the rule in the first place, but to stop it, you need a majority vote and the President's signature.

Shouldn't it have taken a majority vote and the President's signature in the first place?

This out-of-whack unconsitutional system creates a strong bias in favor of bureaucratic, not democratic, power. The President's bureaucrats can make new law with no authority whatsoever, and no Constitutional procedures observed -- and to stop them, it requires a formal law.

Which he can veto.

Terrific, huh?

This is what I'm talking about when I say Obama will become a tyrant in 2013 if he is still in office. With Congress still arrayed against him (in all probability), he will just go the Soviet Route and rely on his unelected bureaucrats unconstitutionally passing laws on its own (or, rather, his) authority.

Democracies end when power is moved farther and farther from actual democratic processes. First, the state governments (standing closest to the citizen) is diminished in favor of a centralized government that answers chiefly to bureaucrats, lobbyists, and the permanent Washington government establishment; then the elected members of Congress are diminished in favor of unelected bureaucrats in the Executive (who, in many cases, really can't even be fired).

One line of attack removes power from the nation at large to Washington DC; the second line of attack removes power even from the elected tribunals from the country and pushes it into the hands of bureaucrats who answer only to the Executive (if they answer to anyone at all).

This must not stand. Because if it stands, the American Experiment will not.

posted by Ace at 02:32 PM

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