McConnell Offers NLRB Vote…with a Catch
OMG! Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) says he won’t stand in the way of a vote on President Obama’s nominees to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Well, sort of. McConnell says that out of the president’s bipartisan package of five nominees, Republicans won’t filibuster the two Republicans and just one of the three Democratic nominees.
But as Dave Jamieson points out on The Huffington Post :
There's just one small catch. If Democrats were to accept this GOP proposal, the labor board may be comprised of a Republican majority within a matter of months, never mind that a Democrat occupies the White House.
McConnell says that Republicans will continue to block votes on the nominations of current NLRB members Sharon Block and Richard Griffin who have been serving on recess appointments. But a federal appeals court ruled that the recess appointments to the NLRB are "invalid." That case is heading to the U.S. Supreme Court.
If the NLRB nominees fail to be approved, the board would fall below a quorum on Aug. 1 and no longer would be able to do its job of protecting America's workers. That is exactly what McConnell and his colleagues are after. Julius Getman, a labor law scholar at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, told Jamieson:
They'd be happy to see it go out of business until there's a Republican president and you can go back to a Bush board or something like it. The idea of having an agency that's actually protecting the rights of workers has very little appeal to Republicans.
Read Jamieson’s full article .
Early this week, the fight over the NLRB and other Obama nominations blocked by Republicans is expected to come to a head. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has said if the Republican obstruction continues, he may be forced to take action that could change Senate filibuster rules concerning nominations.
