Bunny Trails

[ken_sylvania]

Looks like the current administration has it's own crop of "appointed" individuals who are or were serving in violation of the vacancies act. Is this going to be simply the "new normal."

Who?

They have made a bunch of recess appointees when the Senate was out of session but those are time-limited. And that is the accepted process.

Which Biden appointees are illegally appointed?

I didn't say they were illegally appointed. I said they were serving in violation of the vacancies act. Here's a list to get you started.. not necessarily comprehensive.

Charlotte Dye, Federal Labor Relations Authority General Counsel - 11/16/2021 to current
Deidre Harrison, Controller in the Office of Federal Financial Management - 11/2/2022 to current
Allison Randall, Director of the Office on Violence Against Women - 5/26/2022 to current
Tae D. Johnson, Acting ICE Director - 11/16/2021 to current
Karen Freeman, Assistant Administrator of the Bureau for Asia - 11/16/2021 through 3/6/2022
Craig Hart, Assistant Administrator of the Bureau for Asia - 3/6/2022 through 6/22/2022
Ann Marie Yastishock, Assistant Administrator of the Bureau for Asia - 6/22/2022 through 8/8/2022

[Ken]

Looks like the current administration has it's own crop of "appointed" individuals who are or were serving in violation of the vacancies act. Is this going to be simply the "new normal."

Who?

They have made a bunch of recess appointees when the Senate was out of session but those are time-limited. And that is the accepted process.

Which Biden appointees are illegally appointed?

I didn't say they were illegally appointed. I said they were serving in violation of the vacancies act. Here's a list to get you started.. not necessarily comprehensive.

Charlotte Dye, Federal Labor Relations Authority General Counsel - 11/16/2021 to current
Deidre Harrison, Controller in the Office of Federal Financial Management - 11/2/2022 to current
Allison Randall, Director of the Office on Violence Against Women - 5/26/2022 to current
Tae D. Johnson, Acting ICE Director - 11/16/2021 to current
Karen Freeman, Assistant Administrator of the Bureau for Asia - 11/16/2021 through 3/6/2022
Craig Hart, Assistant Administrator of the Bureau for Asia - 3/6/2022 through 6/22/2022
Ann Marie Yastishock, Assistant Administrator of the Bureau for Asia - 6/22/2022 through 8/8/2022

They were made as recess appointments. The various agencies and the GAO are currently arguing about the legality. Who knows how it will come out: https://www.fedsmith.com/2023/02/13/con ... l-counsel/

The situation is somewhat different from the Trump Administration in that the Biden Administration submitted all these people to the Senate for confirmation and the Senate is so dysfunctional that they haven't acted. And so they were re-submitted as recess appointments. In other words, you can point at the Senate.

In Trump's case he appointed lots of people into acting positions without ever bothering to even submit them for confirmation.

[ken_sylvania]

Who?

They have made a bunch of recess appointees when the Senate was out of session but those are time-limited. And that is the accepted process.

Which Biden appointees are illegally appointed?

I didn't say they were illegally appointed. I said they were serving in violation of the vacancies act. Here's a list to get you started.. not necessarily comprehensive.

Charlotte Dye, Federal Labor Relations Authority General Counsel - 11/16/2021 to current
Deidre Harrison, Controller in the Office of Federal Financial Management - 11/2/2022 to current
Allison Randall, Director of the Office on Violence Against Women - 5/26/2022 to current
Tae D. Johnson, Acting ICE Director - 11/16/2021 to current
Karen Freeman, Assistant Administrator of the Bureau for Asia - 11/16/2021 through 3/6/2022
Craig Hart, Assistant Administrator of the Bureau for Asia - 3/6/2022 through 6/22/2022
Ann Marie Yastishock, Assistant Administrator of the Bureau for Asia - 6/22/2022 through 8/8/2022

They were made as recess appointments. The various agencies and the GAO are currently arguing about the legality. Who knows how it will come out: https://www.fedsmith.com/2023/02/13/con ... l-counsel/

The situation is somewhat different from the Trump Administration in that the Biden Administration submitted all these people to the Senate for confirmation and the Senate is so dysfunctional that they haven't acted. And so they were re-submitted as recess appointments. In other words, you can point at the Senate.

In Trump's case he appointed lots of people into acting positions without ever bothering to even submit them for confirmation.

What do you mean by recess appointments? You appear to be using the term to mean something other than what I would generally understand it to mean.

[ken_sylvania]

What Trump did in many cases was just toss out this whole process and appoint his own people as acting secretaries even though they were not within the established chain of command. And then let them stay indefinitely. He tried to do this with the Department of Homeland Security and the GAO told him that was not permissible. He did it anyway and then when Biden came in, he tossed out all the actions of the former acting secretaries during the last year of Trump because they were legally invalid: https://www.gao.gov/products/b-332451

Your argument here might make more sense if you provided an example of what you are claiming, instead of an example of an agency mistakenly using the wrong order of succession document to determine who should succeed an official who resigned. The DHS used the order of succession that would have been appropriate if Secretary Nielsen had been unavailable due to a disaster instead. The correct order of succession was set in an Executive Order - if in fact President Obama had the legal right to set the order succession in an E.O., President Trump would have had the right to change it by an E.O. if he so desired. In this case, it doesn't appear that the issue had anything to do with President Trump appointing an acting secretary when he had no right to do so.

[Ken]

What Trump did in many cases was just toss out this whole process and appoint his own people as acting secretaries even though they were not within the established chain of command. And then let them stay indefinitely. He tried to do this with the Department of Homeland Security and the GAO told him that was not permissible. He did it anyway and then when Biden came in, he tossed out all the actions of the former acting secretaries during the last year of Trump because they were legally invalid: https://www.gao.gov/products/b-332451

Your argument here might make more sense if you provided an example of what you are claiming, instead of an example of an agency mistakenly using the wrong order of succession document to determine who should succeed an official who resigned. The DHS used the order of succession that would have been appropriate if Secretary Nielsen had been unavailable due to a disaster instead. The correct order of succession was set in an Executive Order - if in fact President Obama had the legal right to set the order succession in an E.O., President Trump would have had the right to change it by an E.O. if he so desired. In this case, it doesn't appear that the issue had anything to do with President Trump appointing an acting secretary when he had no right to do so.

Read the article I linked to. In the case of Charlotte Dye the position was last occupied by an acting General Counsel in 2017. There is no actual successor in the organization chart because the position must be (by definition) filled by an attorney and there are no junior or assistant General Counsel positions within that agency. The fact that the position was vacant did not bother the Trump Administration because it meant labor related appeals just dead ended since there was no one to hear them. The position will either be vacant or filled by some new acting person appointed by Biden since there is no one within the agency to promote up.

In any event the fact of the matter is that there were various Trump Administration regulations that were simply thrown out by the courts because the person making them did not have the legal authority to do so. To my knowledge that hasn't happened during the Biden Administration but I would be happy to be corrected.

[ken_sylvania]

What Trump did in many cases was just toss out this whole process and appoint his own people as acting secretaries even though they were not within the established chain of command. And then let them stay indefinitely. He tried to do this with the Department of Homeland Security and the GAO told him that was not permissible. He did it anyway and then when Biden came in, he tossed out all the actions of the former acting secretaries during the last year of Trump because they were legally invalid: https://www.gao.gov/products/b-332451

Your argument here might make more sense if you provided an example of what you are claiming, instead of an example of an agency mistakenly using the wrong order of succession document to determine who should succeed an official who resigned. The DHS used the order of succession that would have been appropriate if Secretary Nielsen had been unavailable due to a disaster instead. The correct order of succession was set in an Executive Order - if in fact President Obama had the legal right to set the order succession in an E.O., President Trump would have had the right to change it by an E.O. if he so desired. In this case, it doesn't appear that the issue had anything to do with President Trump appointing an acting secretary when he had no right to do so.

Read the article I linked to. In the case of Charlotte Dye the position was last occupied by an acting General Counsel in 2017. There is no actual successor in the organization chart because the position must be (by definition) filled by an attorney and there are no junior or assistant General Counsel positions within that agency. The fact that the position was vacant did not bother the Trump Administration because it meant labor related appeals just dead ended since there was no one to hear them. The position will either be vacant or filled by some new acting person appointed by Biden since there is no one within the agency to promote up.

In any event the fact of the matter is that there were various Trump Administration regulations that were simply thrown out by the courts because the person making them did not have the legal authority to do so. To my knowledge that hasn't happened during the Biden Administration but I would be happy to be corrected.

I did read the article you posted. I also read the link you posted, which was about a successor to Secretary Nielsen, not about Charlotte Dye.

In the case of Charlotte Dye - if in fact the Trump Administration didn't care that the position was vacant, would you like to explain why President trump nominated a replacement for the position on 4/11/2019 and again on 2/12/2020?

The position appears to have been legally filled by Charlotte Dye as acting General Counsel from the time she was appointed until 11/15/21. Since then, it's been in violation of the law. I guess maybe the current administration is so concerned about filling the position that they will have it filled, whether legally or not.

I actually find it quite amusing how you previously posted the GAO decision against the Trump administration as the last word in the matter, despite the fact that the agency involved disputed the decision. Now, suddenly you take the position that maybe the GAO is wrong because the agency involved disagrees with the GAO position.

Now, what was that you were saying about recess appointments?

[temporal1]

A random bunny trail not related to any specific thread.

Do other forums have members who stop in intermittently for no other evident purpose other than to chide members for their inadequacies/shortfalls/moral failings? .. (either way, not important, a passing curiosity.)

cat-and-mouse game
1. A situation characterized by two parties engaged in a constant back-and-forth routine
in which the advantage alternates between them.
It's been a real cat-and-mouse game between these two teams—we won't be sure of the victory until the very last moment!

2. A situation characterized by two parties engaged in a constant back-and-forth routine in which one party attempts to gain tactical advantage over or draw out of hiding the other, often only to be thwarted or eluded.
Police have been playing a cat-and-mouse game with drug dealers in this area for years now.

[Grace]

Just watched parts of the Jan. 6 tapes that weren't part of the Jan. 6th committee, on the Tucker Carlson show. The lies promoted by the J-6 committee is astounding.

[Ken]

Checks will only be reduced if Congress decides not to fund social security through general revenues in addition to social security taxes. In other words, through the same deficit spending that they use for every other government program like the Pentagon. Given how many old people vote in this country and how many are on social security I think it would be political suicide for Congress to do nothing.

As for what can be done? It is a simple problem to solve. There are five simple ways to increase solvency.

1. Increase the payroll tax limit which is currently at $160,200 which means that every dollar you earn above that you pay no social security tax on. They could increase it to say $500,000 and that would probably completely erase the shortfall.

2. Expand the types of income for which payroll taxes are charged. Right now it is only wages. But they could expand it to other types of income like dividend income so rich people living on dividends instead of wages would be contributing to the program as well.

3. Expand the pool of workers paying into social security. Increasing immigration would do this as it brings in lots of young workers who will be paying for decades before they start to withdraw. And better yet, undocumented immigrants who pay into the system but never withdraw if they are using fake IDs. That is one hidden financial benefit to undocumented workers. They pay into fake social security accounts for which the government is happy to pocket the money. But then they never withdraw. So from the government's perspective it is all income and no cost.

4. Raise the payroll tax percentage which is currently at 6.2% for the employer and 6.2% for the employee, or 12.4% total and for self-employed who are both employee and employer. If they raised it to 7% it would probably erase much of the shortfall.

5. Cut benefits. The most common proposal for cutting benefits is to raise the retirement age. Which is most definitely nothing more than a benefit cut. And raising the benefit age most egregiously hurts blue collar workers more than white collar professional workers so is hugely unfair. But that is the option you will most likely hear about. And they will most likely put it into the future so no current retirees see a cut. Only future retires will just have to wait longer or get less.

My own personal option would be to raise the payroll tax limit to say $500,000 and index it to inflation. And then maybe raise the payroll tax to 7% if the first option doesn't do enough.

I would not want to see the retirement age raised as that would be devastating for blue collar workers, farmers, etc.

[Ken]

Here is why raising the retirement age is so much worse for blue collar workers. Compare me to my cousin who is a dairy farmer in PA.

My cousin.

Started farming at ag 18 upon graduating from HS and has not had much of a break since. And since he has been self employed he has been paying the full 12.4% all these years.

At the full retirement age of 66 he will have worked and paid into social security for 48 YEARS

And if the full retirement age is raised to 68 years as proposed he will have worked 50 YEARS before drawing any social security. And farming is so much harder on the body than any sort of blue collar job so he might well not last until age 68 and will have to retire early on a reduced benefit.

Myself

Instead of starting work at age 18 I went to college for four years. Then did some traveling and then went into the Peace Corps for 3 years as a volunteer (with minimal stipend). I came back and did some off and on fisheries biology work on fishing boats in Alaska 6 months out of they year while volunteering back in Central America between boat deployments. Then I went to grad school for 2.5 years and landed a government fellowship and didn't actually start a full time career job until about age 31. Now I had been working for much of that time, but not really full time. Just odd jobs, university assistantships, that sort of thing.

So if I started full time permanent career work at age 31 then when I reach full retirement age of 66 I will have worked full time and paid into social security at the employee tax rate of 6.2% for a grand total of 35 YEARS. And even if they raise the retirement age to 68 I will still only have 37 YEARS of full time social security employment.

No matter how you slice it, my farmer cousin will have paid into social security for 13 more years than me to get the same benefit and same retirement age. Is that fair? I think not.

And it is worse still, because Social Security only uses your top 35 years for calculating your benefit. So they will use all 35 of my years of full employment. But for my cousin, they will still only use 35 of his 48 years of full employment. In other words, he worked an additional 13 years compared to me but with ZERO credit for all those extra years of work in his eventual social security benefit. Is that fair?

The better way to do it would be to make the full social security retirement age a SLIDING scale that would be something like age 65 or 40 full years of employment, whichever comes first. That way your average blue collar worker or farmer could retire at age 58 if they have worked full time since HS but your average professional who took off 6-8 years of college before starting a career would get the regular retirement age of 66, which still only represents the same 40 years of employment.