Obama to Appoint Cordray as Head of Consumer Bureau

[savalez]

7. Ah ha!

The reason these recess appointments where given after the start of the session is to get a 2 year appointment instead of just 1 year.

From TPM:

By definition, a recess appointment expires at the end of the next full session of the Senate. If a nominee is recess appointed in the middle of a Senate session, he or she serves through the rest of that year, and through the next session.

Yesterday, it turns out, the Senate made the switch from the first to the second session of the 112th Congress. Some advocates hoped Obama would use the brief seconds between those two sessions to make the appointment. Because previous Presidents had seized that opening to make numerous recess appointments, Obama could have avoided a procedural or legal fight with the GOP. The rub, though, is that Cordray’s appointment would have expired at the end of the year. The “next full session,” after all, would have began mere seconds after his appointment was official.

By acting today, with session two of this Congress technically under way, Obama has given Cordray the rest of this session and the full next session of the Senate to run the bureau. Cordray could potentially serve through the end of 2013.