House Bill: The Department of Peace Resolution (Failed)

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Atlasian People's House of Representatives
Pending
[/quote]

Sponsor: OneJ_ for NeverAgain
House Designation: HB 1105

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The sponsor has 24 hours to begin advocating for this.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The whole reason we have those two major departments is to consolidate for the sake of the game most of the domestic agencies and most of the foreign agencies and thereby reduce the number of offices and ensure a range of actions that make those positions viable from an activity standpoint (and even from there we have struggled because most of the activity exists in the posting of itineraries and administrative orders and it is easy to let that slide).

I understand that the "focus" would be different, but it is still doing the same things. Just because the "focus" is different, when you are doing the same thing as something else, that is going to run into overlap anyway.

Consider this, what does the SoIA do, and was does the SoS do, that could without doubt be said to not be something that the Department of Peace could be responsible for? Since I cannot answer that question, even after the response from NeverAgain, I am having difficulty seeing a good reason for creating such a sprawling bureaucracy.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Sponsor Feedback: Origination
Status: Representatives have 24 hours to object.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The amendment appears to be adopted.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I still don't like the idea of Congress establishing "executive offices." The whole point of the ConCon reforms in this area was to take that power away from the legislature and give it to the president; while technically the POA still has the final say on whether this becomes a thing (as result of his veto power), establishing this office as an Act of Congress rather than through an Executive Order prevents him from making unilateral changes to the structure of this office as may be necessary.

I get the feeling I'm talking to a brick wall here, but I would urge Congress not to establish a precedent of legislative meddling in the structure of the Executive Branch. A "resolution" is no better than a bill if it mandates the creation of a new office (which is what this does), and making the "Special Commissioner" independent of oversight by the officers of the cabinet is even worse. That the president may unilaterally create and disband executive offices is one of the great strengths of our Constitution; it allows administrations to rapidly adapt to meet changes in the structure and needs of the game and allows the president to quickly reorganize the cabinet to fit the priorities of their administration. That power will be far less useful if Congress gets into the business of creating new "executive" offices whenever it sees fit, and as someone who has been both president and a federal legislator, I find that prospect most unsatisfactory.

As someone who recalls a time when some departments were even hard baked into the Constitution and thus couldn't even be altered or abolished without an amendment and even found it necessary to bring it to the Supreme Court (NC Yankee v Atlasia), I most certainly share your concerns.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Sponsor Feedback: None Given

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Sponsor Feedback: Friendly
Status: Representatives have 24 hours to object. 

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The amendment has been adopted err, damn its too early still.

Where's the "we can't have suggestions" crowd?

What do you mean?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The amendment now has been adopted.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

So any further amendments to remove such wording?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

So any further amendments to remove such wording?

I didn't see this because it was at the bottom of a long post and it blended in.


It was a response to previous Enduro posts about the existence of language structured in the form of a suggestion similar to that of the Naturalization Bill when it had lines like "a record of community service would help", which obviously rather vague and so forth. The now former Representative implied such was present in the bill, so I was asking if he planned or desired an amendment to remove such.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

So are the members ready for a final vote?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The underlying legislation is now at final vote, Representatives, please vote Aye, Nay or Abstain.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I am extending the vote 24 hours because the present vote is is 2-2-2 with three not voting.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

NAY

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I can understand some of these concerns, and would've loved to talk about them. I am deeply disappointed that some of them were not brought up until now, and were never mentioned at all during the ample time we had for debate. I hope that Representatives do consider legislation fully and bring questions up promptly in the future.

To be honest, I do not see much in the way of new arguments on this, just people restating in their own viewpoints what had already been stated previously on this regarding the redundancy and so forth. Subsequent posts by Dereich, Leinad, Clyde and others merely emphasized the same or similar points with a view towards giving their perspective (as required now by House policy).

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Vote on Final Passage of the Department of Peace Resolution:

Aye (2): OneJ_ and Simossad
Nay (4): Dereich, Leinad, NC Yankee, Pessimistic Antineutrino
Abstain (2): Clyde and Peebs

Didn't Vote (1): Santander

The Resolution has failed to be adopted.