Rosenthal, Lawrence
Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:26:55 -0800
Paul:
If “stepping aside from partisan politics” means parsing Rep. Cantor’s with the precision expected of a legal brief, I am happy to agree that one cannot “outsource legislative activity from the White House.” But it might help to try to understand Rep. Cantor’s comments as he no doubt understood them himself – and as the vast majority of his listeners will understand those comments. Rep. Cantor spoke as a politician commenting upon the political judgment of another politician. President Obama chose to make health care his signature initiative, but did not exercise sufficient political control over that initiative to ensure it could survive the relevant political cross-currents. Left to their own devices, the Senate Democrats cut such a horrific deal that even Sen. Nelson wound up recoiling from the fruit of his own negotiations. The Congressional Democrats needed adult supervision, and they didn’t get it. At best, the President might have thought that he could “fix” the bill in conference, but that presumed that political support for the bill would not collapse in the interim given what the public had come to regard as its many defects. The presumption that the President could wait until both houses had acted to intervene actively to ensure that the bill would be politically saleable, of course, proved to be quite erroneous. That reflects poorly on President Obama’s political judgment. And that is a sentiment that I am quite confident Rep. Cantor is willing to share with a straight face. Larry From: Paul Finkelman [mailto:paul.finkel...@yahoo.com] Sent: Friday, January 29, 2010 3:29 PM To: Rosenthal, Lawrence; Steven Jamar Cc: Conlawprof@lists.ucla.edu Subject: Re: Outsourcing Legislation from WH to the House of Representatives Oh come one Larry, step aside from partisan politics for just a minute or two. Congressman Cantor is complaining that the President lets Congress write legislation. Oh My God! what a concept. How unconstitutional! Remember what he said: “outsourcing of the legislative activity from the White House to Nancy Pelosi here in this House,” It is a totally dumb or partisan, or a dishonest complaint. At least admit that. How can any member of Congress say that with a straight face? His discussion of the "left" is of course utterly amusing, since by an rational standard, there is virtually no "left" in the United States and surely not in Congress. As well all know the "left" stands for socialism or communism. The health care bill is going to enrich the insurance companies. The bailout saved banks, stockbrokers, and other large financial entities like AIG, or large manufacturers like GM. If THIS is socialiasm or even "left" wing politics, then Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller must have been Trotskyites and I suppose Richard Nixon was a full fledged Leninist with his wage and price controls. I will admit that Cantor's use of the term "left" may have some political value -- a nice "red meat" term to raise funds, but since we are all academics and intellectuals here, I think we have an obligation, at least among ourselves, to realize the truth of the matter, and call it what it is. Neither Pelosi nor Obama are on "the left" in any meaningful way. ---- Paul Finkelman President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law Albany Law School 80 New Scotland Avenue Albany, NY 12208 518-445-3386 (p) 518-445-3363 (f) paul.finkel...@albanylaw.edu www.paulfinkelman.com ________________________________ From: "Rosenthal, Lawrence" <rosen...@chapman.edu> To: Steven Jamar <stevenja...@gmail.com> Cc: Conlawprof@lists.ucla.edu Sent: Fri, January 29, 2010 3:57:42 PM Subject: RE: Outsourcing Legislation from WH to the House of Representatives This strikes me as quite unfair criticism of Rep. Cantor. In context, it seems clear to me that his point is not that President Obama did something improper by leaving the crafting of the health care legislation to Congress, but that he took a course of action that was politically imprudent, and which reflects poorly on the President’s judgment. Surely he is correct on that point. Congressional support for any major piece of legislation is sure to collapse if it becomes sufficiently unpopular, and in that respect, if the President chose to embrace health care reform as his own political priority (as he did), it would have been politically prudent to ensure that the bill did not become so laden with special interest provisions that it would become a political liability. That, of course, is precisely what happened to the bill (although the deal-cutting actually seems to have been much more problematic in the Senate than the House). In retrospect, this seems to me to be an entirely fair criticism of the President’s approach. Larry Rosenthal Chapman University School of Law From: conlawprof-boun...@lists.ucla.edu [mailto:conlawprof-boun...@lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Steven Jamar Sent: Friday, January 29, 2010 12:37 PM Cc: Conlawprof@lists.ucla.edu Subject: Re: Outsourcing Legislation from WH to the House of Representatives Paul, I'm sure Cantor knows -- and that Darrell's point is correct -- Cantor is engaging in cynical campaigning (is there any other kind?) to undermine Obama. If Cantor were Majority Whip, I'm sure we'd find him complaining about Obama trying to usurp the proper constitutional function of the House by being too involved in the legislation process. It is just substantively nonsense, cynically done for political gain. Of course the President has a huge role to play in legislation -- including directing it. And some Presidents (e.g., Bush II, Lyndon Johnson) play that role much more vigorously than others (Eisenhower, Carter, even Reagan). No. He understands what he is saying, why he is saying it, and is clearly doing what has become (and has been in the past) the norm for some politicians -- make points, not policy. Steve On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 3:19 PM, Paul Finkelman <paul.finkel...@yahoo.com> wrote: Last time I knew the job of the House of Representatives WAS to write legislation. I guess Cantor does not understand Article I of the US Constitution. It is partisan, but sadly, it is also incredibly dumb ---- Paul Finkelman President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law Albany Law School 80 New Scotland Avenue Albany, NY 12208 518-445-3386 (p) 518-445-3363 (f) paul.finkel...@albanylaw.edu www.paulfinkelman.com ________________________________ From: "Miller, Darrell (mille2di)" <mille...@ucmail.uc.edu> To: "Conlawprof@lists.ucla.edu" <Conlawprof@lists.ucla.edu> Sent: Fri, January 29, 2010 2:43:38 PM Subject: Outsourcing Legislation from WH to the House of Representatives From Politico, full link here: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/32192_Page2.html Cantor criticized Obama for last year’s “outsourcing of the legislative activity from the White House to Nancy Pelosi here in this House,” which he said has resulted in “a bill shift and an agenda shift way to the left and outside the mainstream of this country.” To me, this seems like a fairly gross exploitation of people’s ignorance of our system of divided government, and an indictment of partisan gerrymandering which makes this kind of statement politically resonant. Darrell A.H. Miller Assistant Professor of Law University of Cincinnati College of Law PO Box 210040 Clifton Avenue & Calhoun Street Cincinnati, OH 45221-0040 v: 513-556-0133 f: 513-556-1236 e: darrell.mil...@uc.edu <mailto:darrell.mil...@uc.edu> faculty page: http://www.law.uc.edu/faculty/profiles/miller.php SSRN: http://ssrn.com/author=1107305 <http://ssrn.com/author=1107305> _______________________________________________ To post, send message to Conlawprof@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/conlawprof Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others. -- Prof. Steven Jamar Howard University School of Law Associate Director, Institute of Intellectual Property and Social Justice (IIPSJ) Inc.
_______________________________________________ To post, send message to Conlawprof@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/conlawprof Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.