In denying House leadership travel to on military aircraft, we stumbled into a Constitutional Crises.
If the House (representatives of We, the People) are not allowed to perform their duties by the Executive (also elected by the people but in a different election year), how is this NOT a Constitutional crises?
Who has authority over whom?
The president has full authority over all military functions, and therefore under those guidelines has the right to restrict military travel as he wishes…(Melania flew today from DC to Mar-a-Lago on military aircraft).
The House has full authority over all finances. It funds the military. All budgets must originate from the House and the previous Congress already funded the military budget that would include these planned flights. So, can the Executive forbid the House to do something they voted to do?
In this case, when the President and the House leadership differ in opinions, who actually then gets to decide if they fly or not?
Being in that spot would put one in the proverbial person serving two masters: which one do you decide to listen to? Your boss, or the people who pay your boss?
It appears that proverbial person would be the Pentagon who most likely would defer that decision upwards to the level of the secretary of defense, of which we have none now btw.
So it would be the acting Secretary of Defense who has to decide whether to follow a direct order from his superior the President, or, appease those who whom he is indebted for all future finances.
He could have very easily decided that the executive was wrong, and allowed the flight to continue. In which case we would have a military independent of civilian control, creating another Constitutional Crises.
But he decided to follow the chain of command and the military flight was grounded.
And so, we have the head of delegation of duly elected representatives, elected by a huge majority in their districts, being denied the right to their duties of function, by an executive who was elected by a minority of the American people.
The Constitution is rather vague here. One would have to interpret through the Supreme Court whether in the future, this can be allowed. Article 1: Section 6 states of Congress:
“They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same;and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place. “
One would have to argue to the Supreme Court that being confined on an Air Force bus was somehow similarly equivalent to an arrest. They were indeed stopped in the middle of their “going to, and returning from the same”. Although no charges were brought, the executive branch did interfere with the latter part, their “going to, and returning from the same.”
I’m sure the counter argument for upholding this action from the Justice Department would be that sometimes the President must exercise his authority for the security of the nation. If for fun we imagined that Dana Rohrabacher was flying off to Russia with a dossier of highly classified military codes, we would want Obama to ground that aircraft. Therefore the framers sought to delegate to the executive, who was elected by the whole nation, authority over representative selected by one small portion of that nation. In the current climate of the Supreme Court, this counter-argument would prevail.
But that leaves the opening that any future president or this one, can again simply prevent Congress from doing its elected duty because of a simple difference of opinion. Congresses and Executives have always had to function under differences of opinion. Limiting one or the other would in spirit, be unconstitutional.
IF this is not to happen again, some severe penalty must be levied. For one, the House has the ability to impeach. Since precedence is nine-tenths of the law, not acting here will give autocratic future presidents more leeway to limit Congress in the future.
But,if this House establishes that Congress can impeach over ANY attempt to limit its ability to exercise its duties, even if that impeachment is not seconded by two thirds of the Senate, the precedence for penalty will exist for all future presidents. This president will be the third to have been impeached. This then becomes the cost of imposing restrictions on the duly elected representatives of Congress. And, since impeachments tend to drag out, there is good reason to expect that further evidence of wrong doing by the current executive, could politically undermine any support this president has from the wavering half of his party.
Lesser options could consist of defunding the executive branch (no threat to rogue lame-duck presidents), passing a law that states the Executive shall not interfere with Congressional travel, or a censure that carries no weight.
No. None of those others have any strength to prevent a recurrence. A constitutional crises happened and it must be fixed. The House leadership needs to figure this out quickly.