Posted on 07/12/2021 7:57:36 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Andrew Saul, the Social Security Commissioner President Biden fired on Friday, is vowing to fight his termination given he was appointed to a six-year term by former President Trump in 2019.
“This was the first I or my deputy knew this was coming,” he said, referring to the email he received from the White House Personnel Office on Friday. “It was a bolt of lightning no one expected. And right now it’s left the agency in complete turmoil.”
Saul’s firing came after he refused to resign, though his deputy, David Black, did step down upon the administration’s request.
“I consider myself the term-protected commissioner of Social Security,” he told The Washington Post—adding that he plans to sign into work remotely on Monday.
Saul’s tenure at the SSA, an independent agency, was seen as controversial by Democrats, who took issue with his policies “designed to clamp down on benefits and an uncompromising anti-union stance,” the Post reports. A White House statement listed other problems the Biden administration saw with him.
“Since taking office, Commissioner Saul has undermined and politicized Social Security disability benefits, terminated the agency’s telework policy that was utilized by up to 25 percent of the agency’s workforce, not repaired SSA’s relationships with relevant Federal employee unions including in the context of COVID-19 workplace safety planning, reduced due process protections for benefits appeals hearings, and taken other actions that run contrary to the mission of the agency and the President’s policy agenda,” the statement said.
The White House also defending its right to fire Saul, pointing to “a recent Supreme Court ruling, followed by a Justice Department memo on Thursday affirming the president’s authority ‘to remove the SSA Commissioner at will,’” according to the Post.
Senate Republicans blasted Saul’s firing on Twitter.
I agree with @ChuckGrassley. This removal would be an unprecedented and dangerous politicization of the Social Security Administration. https://t.co/Y33G4YoZKf— Leader McConnell (@LeaderMcConnell) July 9, 2021
Impeach Biden.
But when President Trump removed CNN Acosta from press briefings, a hack democrat judge ruled that Acosta could not be banned from his job.
Notice the hypocrisy?
RE: But when President Trump removed CNN Acosta from press briefings
Acosta is not a government employee appointed with a fixed term.
For all of us collecting what little of the Social Security monies we paid in all our lives, imagine the strings a corrupt SSA could pull to ensure our compliance with any scheme the DemonRatz devise.
There are two questions here: Was Biden within his constitutional authority to fire this man? For that, we only need to rely on a recent Supreme Court case, Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which held - essentially - that statutory prohibitions on terminating Executive branch political appointees are unconstitutional as a violation of the separation of powers. Anyone who works in the Executive Branch as a political appointee serves at the pleasure of the president and the president alone.
The other question though is, has Biden’s action politicized an organization that has traditionally been largely non-partisan through the years. Yes. This kind of behavior should be viewed skeptically by the media and if it were Trump who did this, that skepticism would be on display. Democrats would be having a cow and I suspect this might have been the third Impeachment.
“The White House also defending its right to fire Saul, pointing to “a recent Supreme Court ruling,”
That ruling involved Elizabeth Warren’s consumer protection agency. It was a strange creating where Congress appointed it’s leader or something. Nothing like Social Security, FCC, etc.
The ruling was narrowly tailored.
Politcalizing the SS like Obama did with IRS.
If Trump did this the media wouldn’t stop screaming about it. But today they hardly make mention of it.
That ruling basically revolved around the issue as to whether or not the outgoing director could appoint his own successor. It was narrowly tailored and does not bear on this case as much as the Biden communists claim it does.
"The President’s power to remove—and thus supervise—those who wield executive power on his behalf follows from the text of Article II, was settled by the First Congress, and was confirmed in the landmark decision Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52 (1926). Our precedents have recognized only two exceptions to the President’s unrestricted removal power. In Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, 295 U.S. 602 (1935), we held that Congress could create expert agencies led by a group of principal officers removable by the President only for good cause. And in United States v. Perkins, 116 U.S. 483 (1886), and Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 654 (1988), we held that Congress could provide tenure protections to certain inferior officers with narrowly defined duties.
We are now asked to extend these precedents to a new configuration: an independent agency that wields significant executive power and is run by a single individual who cannot be removed by the President unless certain statutory criteria are met. We decline to take that step. While we need not and do not revisit our prior decisions allowing certain limitations on the President’s removal power, there are compelling reasons not to extend those precedents to the novel context of an independent agency led by a single Director. Such an agency lacks a foundation in historical practice and clashes with constitutional structure by concentrating power in a unilateral actor insulated from Presidential control.
It's hard to see how the Social Security Administration fits into one of the two categories Roberts cites; the SSA Administrator is not an 'inferior officer' nor is the Social Security Administration a 'quasi-legislative agency.' It's an administrative agency.
Congress has the power to add a clause to any legislation they present as a bill for the President to sign that denies judicial review.
Trump should remember this should he be inaugurated again as President.
I can’t wait till Trump is reelected in 2024. There will be no stopping him this time from dismantling all the resident has done/undone! And they will not be able to say he can’t fire who ever he wants this time!
I'm guessing that his access to the network will have been revoked and people won't be taking his calls.
This would be the same Leader McConnell who refused to hold confirmation hearings for Carolyn Colvin, Obama's Social Security Commissioner?
The position has been politicized for quite some time.
The White House also defending its right to fire Saul, pointing to “a recent Supreme Court ruling, followed by a Justice Department memo on Thursday affirming the president’s authority ‘to remove the SSA Commissioner at will,’” according to the Post
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Soooo many things wrong here....and all in one sentence!
No. Mitch McConnell refused to hold a confirmation vote on Obama's nominee, Carolyn Colvin. The position may traditionally have been apolitical but that changed several years ago.
Comey said he was "term protected" because he had a 10-year term.
Critics argued that the 10-year term was a maximum limit, not a guarantee of employment for the duration.
I would think the same argument applies here.
-PJ
President Trump could not fire the back stabbing bastards he wanted to. So why should this lying cheating bastard who is not even the legitimate President be allowed to fire anyone?
Which ones? And why couldn't he?
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