Yes, that's exactly what the "framers" intended, as they wanted the Senate and Congress to be a total check, if needed, on executive power. The "duty" of the Senate is discharged if it disagrees with the president and fails to act on his requests.
Absurd. No way the Framers envisioned some partisan wackjobs in the Senate refusing to even consider any and all presidential nominees. If they envisioned that they would not have included the advise and consent clause - they wanted to give the Senate the right to consider nominees and say yea or nay. They did not intend to give the Senate (much less one senator) the right to negate the president's right to have nominees considered on their merits.
I will argue that the Founders most certainly did envision some sort of "alphabet soup" of agencies.
Wingers have such a strange view of the Constitution. They have no problem saying that the Framers intended to all a Senate to negate the president's power of appointment, while claiming that the Framers did not all intend to permit the formation of executive agencies.
Hamilton was "clear" on that topic -- and only Hamilton. It is clear from the discussion and writing of other ratifiers, especially Madison, that if Hamilton's views had been generally held, the Constitution would not have been ratified. The founders were wise enough to incorporate a means for making changes to the structure of government -- via the amendment process. They didn't envision reinterpreting the document so it meant different things at different times.
Hamilton did pen the majority of the writings in The Federalist Papers in support of the Constitution...so..."only" Hamilton is simply an attempt to disregard those writings.
No way did they envision the president being able to make appointments without Senate consent -- I started to ask you to look up the word "consent" but I think its better if I go over to dictionary.com and get the definition so that we can avoid obfuscation:
Hamilton, as rich a commentator as he was, was not in charge of inserting most language into the Constitution. That task fell to Madison, who had a diametrically opposed view of the words "general welfare." How is it you ignore his writings on the topic?
I don't ignore Madison...but you again discredit Hamilton, who, once again, wrote the majority of the papers in support of the document.
Papers in support of the document are not the document itself, and I think Madison is the more authoritative source on the document itself. I'm not discrediting Hamilton -- he was the Bill Clinton of his time, a brilliant polymath who rather lacked a personal moral compass. I provided a definition of general welfare elsewhere.
I think Hamilton is the more authoritative force. By far. And the more insightful and forward thinking. I think it is beyond obvious the language in the Constitution allows Congress to create agencies to handle the needs and demands of the nation.
Based on what? In the 1800 presidential election, the issue of general welfare was really the only thing separating federalists and republicans. The republican Jefferson won, adopted the Madisonian view of general welfare, and that view was retained by all presidents for the next 60 years, and many of them even beyond the Civil War. The Hamiltonian position lay in a backwater until resurrected in the 1930s.
Based on what he wrote and what has become of our nation.
I'm not wishing for others to suffer, I'm wishing for two criminals to pay for their crimes against the American people. There's a difference that might be too deep for you.
"What he wrote" is insufficient basis for the authority of what he wrote. Madison, at least, could claim the authority of being primary editor of the Constitution. I'd say the view that prevailed for the longest duration of US history, the Madisonian position (that was favored by every president from Jefferson through at least Grant), would carry more authority.
I want to begin with the math...
Like all mathematics, the formula is only as good as the inputs. And the real range of dates really skips the era from Grant to FDR, and the court case Butler v. US which resurrected the Hamiltonian view in 1936. I'll stipulate that there was a period between the Civil War and the 1930s where there was no well-defined legal view of general welfare, but it acquired the "Hamiltonian" view as a practical matter only after that time (and only after FDR's threat to pack the Supreme Court cowed certain justices into ruling in favor of New Deal programs).
As I answered, there are very few limits on the powers of the government as long as their actions were dedicated to the mission statement. The word Hamilton used was plenary.
As you know, I didn't say that presidents can make such appointments without the Senate's consent. I did say that the Framers intended that the Senate either advise or consent - say yea or nay. The Framers did not envision that partisan wackjobs would seek to negate the presidential power to fill seats by refusing outright to even consider any nominees. Making it even worse, the Senate did not even make such a decision as to Obama's nominee - only Mitch McConnell did. A constitutional abomination.
There is a difference between rights retained by the people, and the authority of the government to help the people achieve those rights.
