Nancy Pelosi pushes a new bill to give Congress power to strip “future presidents”

Discussion in 'Political Discussions' started by Lerner, Oct 10, 2020.

Loading...
  1. Lerner

    Lerner Well-Known Member

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on Friday she is pushing for a new bill to determine whether any president – is capable of serving their full term.
    Pelosi announced legislation on the 25th Amendment that would give Congress more power to strip “future presidents” of their power.

    So if Biden is elected Dem's can replace him if they think he can't serve his full term.
    Suspecting they can use Biden and replace him if he is not going to cave into radical left with a more radical left politician with Marxist Communist agenda.
     
    Last edited: Oct 10, 2020
  2. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    I don't see anything in the 25th amendment that would authorize such a measure. Unless the president and his Cabinet are at odds, Congress isn't even mentioned as part of the process. More importantly, if Pelosi were genuinely concerned about presidents holding too much power, she'd introduce legislation that would scale back how much legislative authority has been ceded to regulators and presidential "emergency powers". But of course, she won't do that, because it would actually mean something, and wouldn't just be a way to grandstand.

    That said, Trump may have tweeted that this is about Biden, but only an utter fool would believe this. His normal behavior is erratic enough, but this proposal is coming when Trump is literally tweeting insane BS while on the heavy doses of drugs he's taking to fight COVID.

    So, as ever, a pox on all their houses.
     
  3. heirophant

    heirophant Well-Known Member

    Section Four of the XXV Amendment (the section on removing a President) reads:

    "Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of any other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President."

    https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxxv

    Nancy knows this since she had a big board with this text of Section Four behind her when she made her announcement and she had the same words highlighted that I highlighted in the text above.

    Of course if this is intended to remove President Trump, Nancy faces two big difficulties. First, "as Congress may by law provide" would seem to refer to a law passed by both houses of Congress, not just the democratic controlled House of Representatives. Second, the XXV Amendment requires that the Vice President agree that the President is unable to discharge the duties of the office. It's impossible for me to imagine Mike Pence agreeing to that.

    And that's not all that Section Four says. It also says that if the President transmits his own declaration that he is indeed able to exercise the duties of the office after the process above has been initiated, it then requires a 2/3'ds vote of both houses of Congress to remove him.

    If the Vice Preesident has to concur with whatever mechanism Congress creates (see above), that's a lot more likely to happen if Kamala was a Vice President who the left wanted to supplant a more moderate Biden than it would be if Mike Pence was Trump's Vice President. Of course if Biden contested Kamala and the left's little coup attempt, then it would still require 2/3'd vote of both houses to remove him, something that the democratic party's left is very unlikely to be able to engineer.
     
    Last edited: Oct 10, 2020
  4. Bill Huffman

    Bill Huffman Well-Known Member

    This is apparently something difficult for paranoid unrealistic people to grasp but it is actually very simple. The 25th amendment says that the Vice president and a majority of the cabinet can declare that a President can no longer discharge his duties. Alternatively the 25th amendment says the Vice president and a majority of a commission set up by congress can declare that a President can no longer discharge his duties. She was simply proposing that such a commission should be set up since we've learned from Trump that cabinet leader positions might be left open for ages as well as leaders simply fired. She explicitly stated that it would not apply to Trump. This really has nothing directly to do with Biden or Trump but instead is just trying to figure out how to make things potentially work better in the unseen future using what we've learned in the past.
     
  5. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    This is a false equivalency. Pelosi is pushing for legislation that further articulates what happens in the 25th Amendment. It will not go forward until after this presidential election. If it does, it will be subject to the Judicial branch's judgment as to whether it is Constitutional.

    I think Pelosi is sending a signal that Congress needs a more powerful check on presidents like the current one. Political? Of course.

    Yes, it does. As it stands the 25th Amendment relies heavily upon the judgment of the Vice President and the Cabinet.
     
  6. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    If you're worried that the country will be adversely impacted because the wrong person has one particular job, then the solution is not simply to make it less impossible to remove the wrong person from that job, it's to stop handing additional power over to that position that didn't belong there in the first place.

    The imperialist presidency is a real thing, and it's a real problem. The current position holder makes that obvious, but he's a noticeable symptom, not the underlying disease.
     
    Rich Douglas and Maniac Craniac like this.
  7. Bill Huffman

    Bill Huffman Well-Known Member

    The 25th amendment's intended purpose is not really supposed to be about removing the wrong person. It's supposed to be about someone that is President and becomes incapacitated or compromised somehow in their ability to perform their tasks.

    I agree that there are multiple systematic problems on display here. One, as you mention is that the executive branch power has grown out of proportion and relative to the other branches. While the legislative branch power has shrunk.
     
    Rich Douglas and Maniac Craniac like this.
  8. Maniac Craniac

    Maniac Craniac Moderator Staff Member

    Trump's first order of business was to rattle off as many executive orders as he could, as fast as he could. Now, to be honest, I have no idea whether or not that has been standard practice for a newly elected president. However, I find it terrifying that it's even possible for a president to do that. Wasn't the entire point of the country that no one should have those types of sweeping, unchecked powers?
     
    SteveFoerster likes this.
  9. Bill Huffman

    Bill Huffman Well-Known Member

    I think it is fairly common for a new President to issue some executive orders early in the administration. The executive has very sweeping powers mostly bestowed by laws. For example, Congress passed the Clean Air Act of 1963 described in Wikipedia "It was first amended in 1965, by the Motor Vehicle Air Pollution Control Act, which authorized the federal government to set required standards for controlling the emission of pollutants from certain automobiles, beginning with the 1968 models." The policy details are then set by the executive branch. This kind of policy can be changed by an executive order. Although more commonly it is handled at a lower level in the executive branch. Other kinds of executive orders that are especially popular with Donald Trump are things like him declaring that preexisting health conditions are protected. This type of executive order is completely meaningless from a legal perspective but it was done for purely political purposes. Now when it is said that his administration is trying to strike down the ACA and do away with health insurance protection for people with preexisting conditions he can dishonestly point at his executive order and falsely claim that he has protected them.

    The short summary of it is that Congress passes the laws and the Executive branch enforces the laws.
     
  10. Lerner

    Lerner Well-Known Member

    As long as the power is in check for all parties involved and not abused by the rival party to remove the President and cancel the will of the American people especially when the media shapes the minds and distorts the truth. Yet signs shows people are increasingly fed up with the lying media, and increasingly turning to other ways to get the news.
     
  11. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    If you're going to complain about shaping minds and distorting the truth, you may not want to falsely equate a quirky result of the Electoral College with "the will of the American people" in the very same sentence.

    That's true, and that dissatisfaction with mainstream media is eminently justifiable. Unfortunately, however, for the most part those "other ways" are even less reliable.
     
    Bill Huffman likes this.
  12. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    The only political thing about this bill (on the face, a reasonable proposal to implement a power the Constitution gave the Congress long time ago) is it reminds people that President Trump is a frail old man. COVID-stricken, too. No doubt this is why shrewd Nancy talks about it now.

    Nancy Pelosi is no more or less "extreme leftist" than President (excuse me Vice-President... for now) Biden is. So all this talk about this weird plan to replace him with Kamala Harris (who, need I remind, ran as a choice of the moderate/establishment Democrats - just like Pelosi, and Biden) is the figment of imagination of increasingly desperate wingnuts. Lerner, you should be smarter than that.
     
  13. Lerner

    Lerner Well-Known Member

    I hope Trump wins the 2020 elections and we will never have to find out.
    But if I'm wrong about the outcome of the election, I hope you are correct in your views and I'm wrong.
    I prefer moderate vs radical.
     
  14. Bill Huffman

    Bill Huffman Well-Known Member

    Actually you are a radical yourself, so I assume you mean you prefer moderate to radical left?
     
  15. Lerner

    Lerner Well-Known Member

    I will have to live with the outcome of the elections.
    So if my candidate doesn't win then I hope that what Stanislav said about Harris that she is moderate (I think she is much left than that) is correct and I'm wrong.
     
  16. Bill Huffman

    Bill Huffman Well-Known Member

    Yes, I understood that part. I was just clarifying for you.

    Since you are a radical right yourself it's assumed you meant to say, "I prefer moderate vs radical left".
     
  17. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    It's amazing how many progressives act as if everyone to the right of them are reactionary fascists, how many conservatives act as if everyone to the left of them are radical Marxists, and how out of touch both look for doing it.
     
    Stanislav likes this.
  18. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    That's actually very true.
     
  19. Lerner

    Lerner Well-Known Member

    I think I'm far from radical, I think I see the radical left using moderate left to make serious changes to our country.
     
    SpoonyNix likes this.
  20. Bill Huffman

    Bill Huffman Well-Known Member

    The idea that moderate Democrats are Marxists trying to destroy our country is a radical right idea. If you want to argue that is currently the norm for Republicans these days then I'd say that someone has radicalized the party. I think what I see is the radical right fearing the bogeyman behind every corner because their leader is preaching fear and hate.
     

Share This Page