HB 2016-1041 - Increasing the Vice Presidents Power Amendment (TABLED)

[NeverAgain]

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Sponsor: 1184AZ

I open this up for a 48 hour debate.

[LLR]

Could we see what powers are currently available for the VP? Can they not vote now?

[Terry the Fat Shark]

They cannot regularly vote on bills, they can only break ties and introduce confirmation hearings

[Pragmatic Conservative]

The VP can only vote on bills in the Senate that our tied. Besides being able to make general statements about policy, their only real power is running confirmation threads and replacing the President if a vacancy occurs mid-term. 

[Kingpoleon]

Is the President of the Senate a ceremonial title?

I'd suggest keeping a Senator on the ball for moving and posting legislation to keep that from interfering with Cabinet duties.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Having heard the proposed amendment and the testimony of the sponsor in this thread, it is evident that the representative's understanding of the powers currently vested in the vice president is incomplete at best. This statement

Besides being able to make general statements about policy, their only real power is running confirmation threads and replacing the President if a vacancy occurs mid-term. 

is simply not accurate. A brief review of the Fourth Constitution reveals that the vice president has three major powers, in addition to their place as first on the presidential line of succession.

(1) The Vice President is the "President of the Congress," making them the chief administrative officer of the legislative branch. The framers of the Fourth Constitution envisioned the VP as the link between the Senate and the House of Representatives; while the incumbent vice president has mostly neglected this responsibility, it remains a defining feature of the bicameral system.

As President of the Congress, the VP's main job is to coordinate the upper and lower houses of Congress. In practical terms, this means (a) presiding over joint sessions of Congress; (b) administering the election of the PPT*; (c) presiding over confirmation hearings; (d) ensuring that legislation passed by the House proceeds to the Senate, and vice versa. Note that the current VP has largely left these responsibilities to the PPT and the Speaker of the House, with the result that the bicameral system is not working nearly as well as it should.

(2) As in real life, the VP reserves the right to vote in Senate proceedings when - and only when - there is a tie.

(3) Under the provisions of Article VIII, the vice president may be appointed to serve in the cabinet.


So, as we can see, the vice president actually has broad constitutional and statutory powers to create policy and play an active role in Congressional proceedings. The root of inactivity in this office is not that the VP has no power to act, but that they choose note to. As such, the solution to this problem is to elect active vice presidents, rather than ramming through a top-down statutory solution.

As far as the specifics of this bill, I urge the House to reject this amendment on the following grounds:

     (1) Subsections i and ii violate the principle of the separation of powers and compromise the VPs ability to act as a link between both houses by making him, in effect, a member of the Senate;
     (2) Subsection iii is redundant, as the VP is already eligible to be appointed to the cabinet under the provisions of Article VIII.



*In the spirit of the original plan, the vice president would also have administered the election of the House Speaker; this power has since been usurped by the Dean of the House of Representatives.

[Clark Kent]

I can't support this. This would be a major disturbance in the separation of powers.

[Lumine]

Since I've been named a few times - unkindly perhaps, but let us not pretend I'm the most active officeholder here -, I might as well argue a few points as the current holder of the title. I don't think the current amendment as it stands quite works, but as a general principle we ought to be giving different responsibilities to the Vice-President than the ones I'm supposed to have. Or being honest with ourselves and finally eliminate an office that has always lacked a clear purpose and has more to do with imitating the US system of government than a clear necessity for its existing.

Those specific powers are indeed the tie-breaking power, the confirmation thread responsibility, the PPT election administration, and yes, the grandiose title of "President of the Congress" which is technically supposed to give one broad responsibilities on paper. And while I deeply respect and support the new Constitution, I often made it clear that the way the Vice-Presidency was handled was less than ideal, because it continued a trend that has reliably failed to make the Vice-Presidency work through many different holders of the title.

Bicameralism, similarly, is also a deeply flawed concept (again, to me, I respect those who back it and want to make it work) that looked good on paper, but that in my opinion often tends towards greater gridlock than actual efficiency. A Vice-President is supposed to preside over Congress now, but the actual powers rest with the presiding officers of each chamber (as is only right), leaving the Vice-President with actually vague responsibilities over a system that is not quite working. And while before my longer periods of absence due to personal reasons I did play a part in commenting on what Congress was doing wrong, it was not up to me to suddenly make it work. That doesn't excuse my utter lack of activity and the fact that I could have done more on this office, but I doubt the office looks as clear to many of us in Atlasia as it looks to the Secretary of State.

What I mean is that every time we have a debate on the Vice-Presidency we argue to give it real power, but end up with a watered compromise that some argue "gives it power" but remains vague. But arguing that "electing active VP's" is the sole solution is too take an optimistic view of the situation that won't solve the matter. After all, in the past, we had out share of VP's playing an active role but deterred from doing so because it was too large a role, even if their official responsibilities were slim. And people largely recognize this. Look at Blair, for example, who has argued about the importance of giving the VP a seat in the cabinet and, in his particular case, a diplomatic role which I think would be far more concrete than vague duties about making bicameralism work when it is clear it is actually rather flawed.

So yes, I don't see why we shouldn't rethink the way the Vice-Presidency works, instead of merely reducing ourselves to argue that inactivity is the sole problem with the office. It isn't.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

What I mean is that every time we have a debate on the Vice-Presidency we argue to give it real power, but end up with a watered compromise that some argue "gives it power" but remains vague. But arguing that "electing active VP's" is the sole solution is too take an optimistic view of the situation that won't solve the matter.

This is a fair point. I'll concede that my earlier post took an overly simplistic view of the matter, though I maintain that simply tacking on new powers willy-nilly ignores the crux of the problem. Do you think the VP's responsibilities as "President of the Congress" can be made specific enough to be meaningful, or is it best to scrap that particular clause and focus on integrating the VP into the cabinet?

[Anna Komnene]

Do you have any thoughts on how we might make the position better Lumine?  I respect your opinion quite a bit, and I think experience in the office matters for these things.

[Pragmatic Conservative]

This is something I hope we can create a compromise solution to increasing the vice presidential powers. I ask that if others have suggestions on how to amend  the bill that they would introduce them.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

With great respect towards Vice President Lumine, he is in fact incorrect The Vice President did work previously under the old "trend" in which he refers.

Between March 2013 and August 2014, we had four out of five Vice Presidents who were active, and successful and we did that by giving them an administrative roll within the Senate handling bills from the President's Administration, cabinet, emergencies etc.

The Vice President could in fact be the most active and engaged position because it has to interact with multiple different entities. Some of this may be the rules of the chambers getting in the way and while I understand the need for simplicity, the Vice President is/should be in a position to administer and rush through emergency bills for example. There are other ways as well and I would note it was the quest for simplicity above all else in the Senate rules that deleted the VP's newly active roll back in late 2014 and put us back to where we were before. The VP should also be responsible for administering negotiations between the two chambers over bills where there is disagreement. The VP can also handle outreach between the President and members of Congress to to obtain support for legislation. And bottom line, the Vice President should primarily be above all else an active and engaged participant in most all activities of the administration, which ensures an easy transition if the unthinkable happens.

If I am not mistaken, the VP can already serve dual capacity as a member of the cabinet so I don't see why a change is necessary or a rethinking about the roll in order to perform in that capacity, especially if the "present specified duties leave nothing to do". Of course I could be wrong about that, and may be thinking about the old system, in which case we should allow that as an option. I would caution against abolishing the VP before we explore opportnties to involve VP more in Congress and elsewhere, and I would also caution against abolishing the bicameral system at this juncture.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

This is something I hope we can create a compromise solution to increasing the vice presidential powers. I ask that if others have suggestions on how to amend  the bill that they would introduce them.

In terms of the proposed changes, I am fine with all of them except perhaps the voting. The VP doesn't need an authorization to debate legislation, but I suppose putting it in their helps thought it should refer to both chambers in that sense in keeping with him being President of Congress generally as opposed to President of the Senate and that way it provides more opportunities for participation in debate. However, I am kind of uneasy about an "At-large" elected VP getting a full vote in what is an all-regional Senate.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

If I am not mistaken, the VP can already serve dual capacity as a member of the cabinet so I don't see why a change is necessary or a rethinking about the roll in order to perform in that capacity

This is correct.

[NeverAgain]

Okay, I am going to increase the debate period another 24 hours.

[Lumine]

What I mean is that every time we have a debate on the Vice-Presidency we argue to give it real power, but end up with a watered compromise that some argue "gives it power" but remains vague. But arguing that "electing active VP's" is the sole solution is too take an optimistic view of the situation that won't solve the matter.

This is a fair point. I'll concede that my earlier post took an overly simplistic view of the matter, though I maintain that simply tacking on new powers willy-nilly ignores the crux of the problem. Do you think the VP's responsibilities as "President of the Congress" can be made specific enough to be meaningful, or is it best to scrap that particular clause and focus on integrating the VP into the cabinet?

Do you have any thoughts on how we might make the position better Lumine?  I respect your opinion quite a bit, and I think experience in the office matters for these things.

Certainly, sorry if I sounded overtly hostile before (but I've been having a series of bad days including a week of being ill). I'll concede as well to Truman that mindlessly giving powers to the VP can also be a problem, so if we can actually argue on the scope of responsibilities a VP should have in the future I think that might be for the better.

The problem is that most positions in Atlasia actually have determined roles. We know what the strict duties of a Senator are, and the same goes for the President, and the Supreme Court, and the Regional Governments. It's slightly different with the Cabinet, but broadly speaking we can all argue the SoIA and the SoS have a clear area in which to act. There are many individuals who are successful in going beyond these roles, for example, Governors who take extensive time to recruit people, or run newspapers, or something of the sort. And that enriches Atlasia, but they have clear roles and duties to fulfill besides having the potential to do these things.

The Vice-Presidency, though, falls on a more ambiguous level. And indeed I'm going to have to admit that a VP can play a large role in a particular administration by doing all of this interaction with Congress and legislations and so on. But, and this is the main point, that is not a clear legal duty. It's something the Vice-President is free to do, but all administrations are different, and all VP's are different. It's just too open a role, too ambiguous, too prone for potential criticisms if a VP is perceived to go too far on his role on the executive or the legislative. And that ambiguity, I think, is at the heart of the problem. If we are going to have this office, and it seems the Senate seems inclined to the existence of the Vice-Presidency, then my suggestion is to make it less ambiguous and have a set of clearer rules and powers of the office that any VP can make use of, instead of expecting a large role to be played without exactly defining how.

There is a problem, though. And that is that powers for the VP will always fall into the issue of separation of powers. The VP is unique in the sense that debate hasn't been conclusive on whether he is from the executive (as he is elected alongside a President and can sit on the cabinet), or whether he is from the legislative, as President of the Congress. So that is a problem. Personally, I think the VP makes more sense (from a purely practical point of view, I'm not taking legalistic or constitutional approaches to this) as an executive officer elected with the President, with a seat in cabinet than he does as a legislator, something that comes more from the mindset of the late 1700's in the US than anything.

After all, if we are to keep bicameralism then each house can indeed be led by the Speaker and the PPT. You might argue an inactive VP could make them less efficient, but if you had an active VP but an inactive Speaker and PPT then Congress would work even less, and the VP wouldn't be able to solve that much because he wouldn't have real powers to act behind lobbying behind the scenes or in public. If we are to keep the President of the Congress and if we indeed wish it to be more effective, then the role should embrace in a manner similar to the original proposal, give him A. A larger role in the Senate as a more powerful representative of the Executive in terms of proposing or introducing legislation, and actually voting on the matters instead of relying on influence alone. Or B. Making him more effectively the executive's representative in Congress as a whole. Giving him a vote in the House probably goes too far, but a VP could handle legislation slots for emergencies and particularly for the administration's bills.

On the other hand, if we are to consider it an executive position, the current provision so he can serve in cabinet works fine, although personally I've always thought Atlasia has not handled cabinets properly in the last few months. You can argue the inactivity problem, but unless one solves the GM-simulation dilemma for good and give those offices more clarity on their duties beyond saying "you're in charge of all internal affairs period" then the system is unlikely to work as it should and therefore relies on strong active personalities, instead of relying on an office strong by itself. Combining both sets of powers though is probably a bad idea. A Vice-President with a cabinet portfolio and all sorts of powers in Congress is by definition a powerful VP, but it's far from clear why he should be acting from both branches of government.

Sorry if this a bit long and merely theoretical, but again, I think being practical has taken more and more relevance as some have struggled to save the game, and in that practicality the necessity for the VP remains unclear because his role on the Senate could still be done by the PPT, and all of this lobbying responsibilities and influence wielding are not automatically associated with the office and are not things a President or a cabinet member couldn't do. So we need to decide on whether we want to keep the current blueprints and give the VP a few more specific powers to make his duties clearer (besides what he can do outside of that), or whether we are prepared or willing to make a deeper debate on why the office should exist.

[Anna Komnene]

Yeah, this is definitely a tricky position to grapple with.  A lot depends on the vision of the president and vice president about the kind of administration they want to have.  While I understand why it might help to give the VP some more constitutional powers, I'm not sure it's a good idea to constrain the sort of creative thinking that goes on in a presidential campaign.  Part of the neat thing about Atlasia is how each administration kind of handles things differently.  I've never been an executive, so I don't have that first hand experience, but the way Atlasia is set up, it puts a lot more onus on the executive to be creative about the kind of tone they want to set for their administration.  They aren't just in charge of making decisions on whether to sign bills, but they are also in charge of getting people active and making the game fun and interesting.  In that sense, their role is a lot more open-ended and difficult than being a legislator.

I just don't really think it makes much sense to have the VP voting on bills in the Senate.  Breaking ties is fine but a bigger role than that kind of begs the question "well why aren't they just a Senator then?"  If we're going to have a VP, we have to think about what it means to be a VP and make sure their duties make sense with our concept.  In my opinion, there's two ways that we can see the VP.  

The first way (and I think the current way) is as a team with the president.  In this scenario, the president and the vp work as a team to put together their vision for Atlasia.  While the president will always have the final say on signing bills and making appointments, there are a lot of things the executive can do, from forming task forces, public relations, recruiting, visiting foreign dignitaries, taking actions for the GM to handle, etc.  That's a lot of stuff for just one person.  If we give a lot of responsibility to the VP, it might beg the question "why not the president?"  It makes sense for the president and the vp to work out how they want to share the responsibilities.

The second way is to take a "business" outlook.  In most businesses, vice presidents are in charge of a specific area of the company.  If a company is big enough to have business in multiple sectors, they'll often have several vice presidents who are in charge of each of those sectors.  Pretty much like the president and their cabinet.  I think the reason why handling the cabinet in Atlasia is so hard is because it doesn't take long to exhaust the possibilities of what you can do.  With the SoS and the SoIA, between the two of them, they pretty much sap up most of the possibilities for the VP to take action.  Using this model, the president could abolish SoIA and give that role to the VP.  The VP could also have duties similar to an Attorney General (defending the government in court cases), though that depends on court cases existing, or could act as a sort of press secretary for the president.  I'm not sure that these powers should be specifically outlined in the constitution (with the exception maybe of giving the VP an AG type power), but they are things for the president and the VP to consider.

Anyway, I guess that's my long and rambling way of saying I don't think the VP needs more constitutional authority, except maybe if we want to consider giving it the power to represent the executive in court cases, or something similar to that.

Maybe we should be focusing more on setting up a more interactive and rule-based GM system, that would allow the president, vp, cabinet, and legislators to take actions and respond to scenarios.

[windjammer]

If you want to increase the role of  the VP, who is president of the congress, why not rewriting the rules and giving the following duty: "when a piece of legislation has passed one of the chamber and is sent to the other one, the President of Congress administers that", that was the goal of the reform of the VP powers, but unfortunately no chamber modified the rules in order to make that happen.

[Anna Komnene]

(3) Under the provisions of Article VIII, the vice president may be appointed to serve in the cabinet.

I just took a look at Article VIII, and I'm not seeing that.

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So no one can be elected to multiple offices, and Justices can't hold more than one public office.  Members of congress can serve in the cabinet, but the language doesn't say anything about the President or the Vice President one way or the other.  If all it said was that Justices can't hold more than one office, then we could assume that anything else is okay, but it goes on to say that members of Congress can.  That leaves other officials in an ambiguous position.  I mean, if I was a Justice, I'd probably lean toward ruling that the President can appoint whoever they want as long as they aren't a Justice, based on Article IV, but I could see why someone might argue to the contrary.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

(3) Under the provisions of Article VIII, the vice president may be appointed to serve in the cabinet.

I just took a look at Article VIII, and I'm not seeing that.

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So no one can be elected to multiple offices, and Justices can't hold more than one public office.  Members of congress can serve in the cabinet, but the language doesn't say anything about the President or the Vice President one way or the other.  If all it said was that Justices can't hold more than one office, then we could assume that anything else is okay, but it goes on to say that members of Congress can.  That leaves other officials in an ambiguous position.  I mean, if I was a Justice, I'd probably lean toward ruling that the President can appoint whoever they want as long as they aren't a Justice, based on Article IV, but I could see why someone might argue to the contrary.

Maybe, but the precedent established over the last four months has been that elected officials outside of Congress can be appointed to the cabinet w/o vacating their seat. For instance, Peebs was both the RG and a member of the Southern Chamber of Delegates for about a month; likewise, Rpryor is currently both SoFE and a member of the Fremont Assembly.

[Anna Komnene]

Good point, though I'm still not sure that says much about the Vice President specifically.  While not the federal congress, they are all members of a regional legislature, which is kind of the same thing.  I guess I wouldn't be opposed to an amendment clarifying that.

Not sure what everyone else thinks, but I kind of like the idea of giving the Vice President Attorney General-type powers - defending the executive branch in court cases and keeping an eye on legislation to make sure everything is constitutional and doesn't need to be challenged in court.  The President could always appoint an AG of their own, but if we want to give the VP more powers, that's something that isn't really being done right now that they could do.  Besides, it's not like we have a huge group of people waiting to jump into new positions.  It would give the office more substance.  People could judge a candidate's VP pick on whether they think they'd be up to the task.

Anyway, I'll introduce an amendment about that and see what people think.

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[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Good point, though I'm still not sure that says much about the Vice President specifically.  While not the federal congress, they are all members of a regional legislature, which is kind of the same thing.

Meh, not really, but I agree that it would be best to clarify this to avoid confusion later on.

[Poirot]

(3) Under the provisions of Article VIII, the vice president may be appointed to serve in the cabinet.

I just took a look at Article VIII, and I'm not seeing that.

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So no one can be elected to multiple offices, and Justices can't hold more than one public office.  Members of congress can serve in the cabinet, but the language doesn't say anything about the President or the Vice President one way or the other.  If all it said was that Justices can't hold more than one office, then we could assume that anything else is okay, but it goes on to say that members of Congress can.  That leaves other officials in an ambiguous position.  I mean, if I was a Justice, I'd probably lean toward ruling that the President can appoint whoever they want as long as they aren't a Justice, based on Article IV, but I could see why someone might argue to the contrary.

I was made aware of this problem text on dual officeholding when the president bragged of dual office for regional officeholder was legal since nobody stopped him from doing it during the confirmation hearing. I was under the impression some people wanted dual officeholding for members of congress at the constitutional convention and that's what was adopted.

THe constititution is careful to specify dual officeholding is allowed for members of congress so it seems this is the exception that is allowed. But the article starts with nobody shall be elected to multiple offices instead of using the traditional nobody can hold multiple offices, so it was claimed everybody can hold multiple offices as long as they are not both elected. (which does not make sense with takinf the trouble to make an exception for members of Congress in that article).   

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=239984.msg5165362#msg5165362

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=239984.msg5165955#msg5165955

[Anna Komnene]

Yeah, I agree that the language is problematic Poirot.  It probably should have been challenged simply to give the Supreme Court something to do.  Anyway, that's why I proposed this change.  I'm glad there's someone else around here that appreciates the importance of linguistic interpretation for constitutional law. 

I feel like it's not ideal to have people holding multiple offices, but at the moment, I think we're more worried with having an active game than having great legal principles.  It's always kind of a trade off.

[windjammer]

If you want to increase the role of  the VP, who is president of the congress, why not rewriting the rules and giving the following duty: "when a piece of legislation has passed one of the chamber and is sent to the other one, the President of Congress administers that", that was the goal of the reform of the VP powers, but unfortunately no chamber modified the rules in order to make that happen.