“I’M SCREAMING BECAUSE THIS IS HUGE!”
“I just kept seeing gas and corporate jets and it was flying right over everyone’s head it seemed.”
It’s not unprecedented and it’s not illegal. Perhaps you can cite the specific Act or law that has been violated. All I see is a hypocritical White House and some possible bad PR but as you pointed out, I’m not particularly bright.
I am more angry at the 3 sell outs - without them this would not pass.
The problem here, as I see it, is that something that is “just known and understood” by anyone with a basic knowledge of our system of government’s separation of powers concept wouldn’t even consider spending money and offering executive branch resources to a legislator to facilitate a unique function of the legislator, especially when the President wants that legislator to perform his function in a way that furthers the President’s ambitions. It is not that it is wrong or a violation of the Constitution for the President to offer a ride to a congressman on a plane, say, if the President happens to be giving a speech in Legislator’s home town with him present and offers him an empty seat on the flight back to Washington. But when it is done to specifically further the Executive’s interest in a piece of pending legislation, and when the President wants that legislator’s vote, it clearly and obviously crosses the line.
When we are considering things like this, there can’t be a statute or regulation to cover everything that could happen.
We must depend upon the President (or any other governmental member of the other 2 branches) to know when a particular act, even if not a violation of a particular statute or regulation, is a violation of the separation of powers concept or any other Constitutional requirement.
The really sad thing is to me is that I doubt if they(the white house) had any idea or thought that to do this infringes on the Constitution. It would take a statute or reg before they would even consider their actions in light of the Constitution. We can’t even begin to think of what they may do in the future that isn’t directly controlled by a statute or regulation.
My prediction is that if they aren’t called on this they will continue to do whatever they think they can, regardless of the Constitution, in order to “save the country”.
When I read this I immediately thought that we were heading down the path of the Roman Senate calling upon Julius Ceaser to save the Republic and it doesn’t matter how it is done. And that very act thus ends the Republic as we once knew it.