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

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Remember that the VP can be appointed as SotI if I am not mistaken.

If a VP wants to go that route in terms of a role then the President can appoint him as SotI. However, in this case Rpryor has explicitly expressed interest in foreign policy matters which is why I made him chair of the National Security Council.

On the other hand SoTI Truman is the foremost expert on the constitution we have.

While it makes sense to give the VP responsibilities or the opportunity for responsibilities, I think the area of justice should be an optional path as it is presently, but not a hard coded responsibility as this text would make it.

The risk of doing so is that if the VP doesn't have legal knowledge, we essentially have neither a Justice Dept, nor an active VP if he gets discouraged and gives up.

[Anna Komnene]

I guess I'm fine with having the SotI handle the Attorney General role, though it kind of bothers me to imply that my amendment "stripped" anyone of anything because I wrote it several months before that executive order even happened.  >.>

Problem is, the VP office will remain irrelevant and I still don't think making them a congressional page is going to do anything to boost VP morale or activity.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

I guess I'm fine with having the SotI handle the Attorney General role, though it kind of bothers me to imply that my amendment "stripped" anyone of anything because I wrote it several months before that executive order even happened.  >.>

Oh, I didn't mean to accuse you of anything; my apologies if it came off that way.

[windjammer]

Thank you all for having passed my proposed amendment.

Yankee I let you remind what Rpryor's duties will be .

[NeverAgain]

I guess I'm fine with having the SotI handle the Attorney General role, though it kind of bothers me to imply that my amendment "stripped" anyone of anything because I wrote it several months before that executive order even happened.  >.>

Problem is, the VP office will remain irrelevant and I still don't think making them a congressional page is going to do anything to boost VP morale or activity.

Completely agree that your legislation was proposed before the Exec. Order, and I do not think anyone is blaming you or your legislation. I think what we are trying to do is balance the important interests of the Vice Presidential Power, and the power of his/her cabinet. What I see to be the IRL roles of the VP is President of the Senate, Presidential Cheerleader, and Policy Advocate for Presidential goals (along with a leaping point to be President themselves). I think what now must happen is we need to define these roles, and add more if they are seen to be fit and proper for the Vice President to hold.

So, as I see it there are three major roles of the VP, Presidential Policy Advisor, President of the Congress, and chief advisor to the President. So, I think before we amend Mrs. Siren's legislation let us delve into what these roles entail and then what other roles does VP mean.

I will allow 24-hours to allow Representatives to propose their ideas on what the position should entail and how best to define their roles.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Thank you all for having passed my proposed amendment.

Yankee I let you remind what Rpryor's duties will be .

Become NeverAgain and Leinad's "best friend"

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

President Policy Advisor
- Can be Foreign, Domestic (includes Economic for game places though in real life it is a seperate advisor class)
- Helps formulate and draft policy in above categories.

Chief Advisor
-Includes Policy and the items below
- Advises on political strategy (Passing a bill through congress, support etc)
- Advises on the political appetite for various issues and proposed legislative/executive actions to them.

President of Congress
-Coordinates with the Congressional Leadership to ensure activity
-Directly involved to extent allowed by Congressional rules/Constitution (slots, Nominations, etc)
- Executive Outreach to the Leadership branch

These are all things I envision Rpryor doing just as Vice President. This does not include or extend to his role as NSC Chair and various other potential capacities he may be appointed to alongside being VP.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I was juicing up the debate, not killing it!



I have ways to make you people talk!

[Anna Komnene]

I guess the main problem with the vice president is that it depends a lot on the personality and approach of the president and their relationship with the VP.  If the president is someone that wants to communicate a lot with the VP and ask for advice and ideas, then the VP ends up having a pretty big role, even if it's mostly in private.  If not, the VP ends up not doing much of anything with little ability to make the office their own.  Plus like Lumine said, there's the whole problem of not wanting to seem like your taking powers the office doesn't have.  The curse of being responsible! 

IMO, that's pretty much the situation with the VP and always has been.  It's just a question of whether people are okay with that situation or not.  I don't see many ways to fix it other than giving the VP actual constitutional duties, but I'm out of ideas for what those duties would be.

[Blair]

bumpity bump bump

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I guess the main problem with the vice president is that it depends a lot on the personality and approach of the president and their relationship with the VP.  If the president is someone that wants to communicate a lot with the VP and ask for advice and ideas, then the VP ends up having a pretty big role, even if it's mostly in private.  If not, the VP ends up not doing much of anything with little ability to make the office their own.  Plus like Lumine said, there's the whole problem of not wanting to seem like your taking powers the office doesn't have.  The curse of being responsible!  

IMO, that's pretty much the situation with the VP and always has been.  It's just a question of whether people are okay with that situation or not.  I don't see many ways to fix it other than giving the VP actual constitutional duties, but I'm out of ideas for what those duties would be.

And that is a debate that should be central focus in the campaign. Is the President going to go it alone or is he going to operate in a fashion that involves, incorporates and welcomes players into the decision making process. I think that way will be more engaging and more fun. And this concerns not just the VP, but everything that is done in this game. It should come back to a fundamental question of how is this being done and can I do this job in a way that better incorporates these positions.

This is especially true now that we have the IRC as it allows for real time meetings. If anything my Presidency has shown is that IRC can be used to make the NSC a productive force, by utilizing a properly managed IRC channel. The only real complication is scheduling them and the process of setting them up means the President's Chief of Staff is also playing an active role. This same process can be applied towards DPC, the whole cabinet, congressional interactions, the leaders of Congress can be gathered by the VP to coordinate actions, Interactions with the Governors and so on.

This cannot be legislated, but it can be done if people see the opportunity and take it with both hands.  

Anyway, I recommend the Congress (respecting all the norms and of course muh separation of powers ), to pass rules changes/constitutional amendments in line with the recommendations of Chief Justice Windjammer and do so at the earliest possible opportunity.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Why am I the last post in this thread?

[NeverAgain]

Okay so here's where we are at:

I think we need to put into law these duties that the VP has (advisor to prez, clarify role as Prez of Cong., and etc). Further amending of House/Senate rules to help clarify this role is something that needs to be done, I just don't know if it should be done within this bill. So here's an amendment to start with.

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[Enduro]

I like it, but what's with it jumping from section 4 to section 54? I think it'd be great to know what those 50 sections say.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

The substance of the amendment seems more or less consistent with what I would suggest. I do have recommendations for its improvement, most of them structural:

(1) For the sake of clarity, the proposed 4.i and 4.ii ought to be incorporated as 3.iv and 3.v. The creation of a new fourth section entitled "Powers" implies that these are powers that belong to the executive branch generally, as opposed to a specific officer of that branch (the vice president). Appending these clauses to the existing Section 3 clarifies the matter.
(2) Technically, there is no "Atlasian Congress" for the vice president to be president of. The official title for the federal legislature is the "Congress of the Republic of Atlasia," so it's probably best to use that term to prevent tricky lawyers from arguing that the VP has no legal power to partake in Congressional proceedings. (As a general rule, it is always better to use the genitive case in place of proper adjectives, but that's a discussion for another day).
(3) Not to be rude, but Section 4.ii is rather pointless. It basically reads as "the vice president is the president's foremost advisor, except when he isn't." It occurs to me that this might be an attempt to allow the VP to serve in the cabinet; if this is the case, the text should say so explicitly. Otherwise, I don't think it's a good idea to enshrine a legally ambiguous and largely optional office in the Constitution; this is the sort of thing that ought to be created by executive order. In any case, I question whether allowing the VP to advise the president actually does anything; are we suggesting that the president does not currently have the Constitutional authority to ask the VP for advice?

Sorry to nitpick (just kidding, I love to nitpick), but the failure to ask these sorts of questions is the reason Fremont's constitution is currently on life support. I suggest the amendment be revised to read as follows:

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[NeverAgain]

Beautiful! My secret reason for writing any amendment is to bait Truman to writing them better!

I withdraw my amendment and sponsor the one proposed by Gov. Truman.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Beautiful! My secret reason for writing any amendment is to bait Truman to writing them better!

If the terrorists ever become serious about taking out our high-ranking officials, they'll tie a red pen and the first draft of a legal manuscript to a string and place if outside my office.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

So is this amendment proceeding as Friendly.


I am beginning to think this stuff is being slow walked on purpose to advance a certain (currently) one sided public crusade on a certain other board.

[NeverAgain]

Okay, does anyone have other thoughts before we move to a final vote?

[Blair]

I went through this bill from Page 1 (which was started back when Leinad was President!)

To throw a spanner in the works I still don't see why Windjammers original position of writing this into the rules change of both houses wouldn't work? Do we really need a constitutional amendment (which will most likely be voted on in June) to change this?.

I mean I looked over the debate about this bill, and I'm unconvinced that an amendment is needed. I'd currently be voting Nay on this if it came up to a vote

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

When the rules for the House and Senate were written, the primary concern was "how can I make my chamber run", not how can I make congress work as a unit. Truman, Windjammer and I out create the Wall Talkers United.


That is the primary source of the problems to this day is that Windjammer was ignored.

[NeverAgain]

Yeah, I think just establishing the Vice President's powers within the House and Senate rules is all that is really needed. I will propose something later tonight.

[NeverAgain]

Yeah, looking this over. There is really nothing to be gained here, at least Constitutionally. When this bill was announced, many of the roles of the VP were up in the air, and have been since subsumed by the SoTI and other folks, rightfully so. I am going to converse with Leinad and will be proposing amending House and Senate rules to adequately include the position of VP in both chambers.

I invite for a motion to table this legislation, on the grounds that first off this thread has gone on too long and is not relevant to current law nor to the bill's first intentions, and that the real issues here are within the House and Senate rules, not the constitution.

[Goldwater]

I second the motion to table this bill.

[Blair]

I third the motion