The change would be a major blow to the system of checks and balances.
President-elect Donald Trump is pushing for the next Senate majority leader to allow recess appointments, which would allow him to install some officials without Senate confirmation.
Typically, the Senate must approve presidential nominations for high-level posts, including cabinet positions, ambassadorships, and inspector general jobs, in a process outlined in the US Constitution. This procedure is meant to be a check on presidential power — a way of ensuring officials directly elected by citizens can guard against the appointment of unqualified or corrupt personnel.
The Constitution, however, also allows for “recess appointments,” a provision that aims to prevent prolonged government vacancies by allowing the president to install officials without Senate approval while Congress is not in session.
Using such recess appointments, Trump would be able to appoint whoever he’d like without giving the Senate the opportunity to question or object to the pick. Critics of the practice note that it increases the risk of unqualified, corrupt, or ideological appointees filling government posts. It also significantly expands presidential power.
Though recess appointments have been used in the past by presidents of both parties, in recent years, the Senate has avoided going to extended recesses, blocking presidents from making any appointments in senators’ absence.
Reinstating recess appointments “would essentially negate one of the Senate’s main roles in governance, which is to vet presidential nominations for high-level positions,” Peverill Squire, a political science professor at the University of Missouri, told Vox. “It would, if the Republicans in the Senate were willing to go along with it, represent sort of an abdication; they would be simply giving up the power that’s afforded them.”
Trump injected his demand into the fierce race to replace Sen.
