| One side note to the appointment of Sen. Salazar to the Department of the Interior is the small problem that it may be unconstitutional.
US Constitution: Art. I, Sec. 6
No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time; and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.
When you raise the pay of the government job, you are disqualified from getting it, and Salazar in his current term raised the pay of cabinet positions from $186,600 to $191,300.
In the past, the fix for this problem has been to lower the pay back down, and hope nobody notices that the Constitution says nothing about un-disqualifying anyone. When the Republicans tried it for the first time, Sen. Robert Byrd mocked the idea saying, "we should not delude the American people into thinking a way can be found around the constitutional obstacle."
Byrd is still in the Senate, and has now seen both parties use the "Saxby fix." Nobody has yet challenged it in the courts, and it is unclear who would have the standing to do so. It came up when they appointed Sen. Clinton, and it looks like once again the fix will pass without judicial scrutiny.
Who knows? Maybe it's legal. At any rate, the debate on applying fix might be an early indicator about the debate on a candidate's confirmation. If so, Sen. Salazar will probably get some good news today as the House takes up S.J.Res.3; "Ensuring that the compensation and other emoluments attached to the office of Secretary of the Interior are those which were in effect on January 1, 2005."
It must be strange to hope your colleagues will quickly grant you a pay cut, and that nobody outside the room will try to fight it. |
RSS Feed
