Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Unconstitutional
Latest news, World news Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011Constitutional Law scholars have stated that the Emoluments Clause of the United States Constitution (the supreme law of the United States) Article I, Sec. 6 disqualifies Hillary Clinton from serving as Secretary of State.
“No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been encreased during such time; and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.”
Senators and Representatives may not simultaneously serve in Congress and hold a position in the executive branch. Furthermore, Senators and Representatives cannot resign to take newly created or higher-paying political positions; rather, they must wait until the conclusion of the term for which they were elected.
In other words (and generally speaking), if the emoluments (i.e., pay) for a certain cabinet position increase, all members of the Congress in office during that time of the increase shall be disqualified from later holding that position.
The Emoluments Clause is in play because the Secretary of State got a cost-of-living adjustment in January of 2008, at which time Hillary Clinton was a senator from New York. As John O’Connor, the author of an 1995 Hofstra Law Review article on the Emoluments Clause puts it: “Under a straightforward application of the Emoluments Clause, Senator Clinton is ineligible for appointment as Secretary of State because the emoluments of that office “have been encreased” during Senator Clinton’s current Senate term, and this disability continues until the end of “the time for which [she] was elected.
Clinton was re-elected senator of New York on November 7, 2006 for a second 6-year term (senators serve staggered six-year terms). That re-election victory disqualified Hillary Clinton for the Secretary of State position until after she finished her second term – January 2013.
Does it matter if the pay hike was activated not by Congress but by the President? That’s what happened here — President Bush issued an Executive Order which raised Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s pay. O’Connor, a partner at Steptoe & Johnson in Washington, thinks not:
I do not believe it affects the analysis that the salary increase occurred as a result of an Executive Order or that the statute creating these quasi-automatic salary increases was enacted prior to Senator Clinton’s current term. By its plain language, the Emoluments Clause applies when the office’s salary “shall have been encreased,” without regard to exactly how it was increased.
Hilary Clinton is disqualified from being Secretary of State because as stipulated in the United States Constitution “Senators and Representatives cannot resign to take newly created or higher-paying political positions”.
On December 1, 2008 President-elect Obama formally announced that Clinton would be his nominee for Secretary of State. Clinton said she was reluctant to leave the Senate, but that the new position represented a “difficult and exciting adventure”. Clinton was reluctant because she knew that she would have to resign as Senator of New York in order to take the job as Secretary of State. She was re-elected Senator of New York in 2006 for another 6 years and she is required by the supreme law of the United States to fulfill her duties to the New York electorate. This disqualification continues until the end of “the time for which [she] was elected, or until January 2013.
On January 21, 2009, Hillary Clinton was confirmed in the full Senate by a vote of 94–2.Clinton took the oath of office of Secretary of State and then resigned from the Senate that same day – in violation of U.S. law. The Democrat controlled Congress knew the appointment was unconstitutional so they circumvented the Constitution by applying a Saxbe fix – passed and signed into law in December 2008. The Saxbe fix, is an unconstitutional salary rollback. It is an unlawful act by which the President of the United States, in appointing a current or former member of the United States Congress whose elected term has not yet expired, willfully and intentionally supersedes the restriction of the United States Constitution’s Ineligibility Clause.
Article 1, Section 6, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution prohibits self-dealing legislation and is intended to protect the “separation of power” of the various branches of government. The constitutional framers wrote the Ineligibility Clause to prevent Congress from enacting laws to benefit one of its own members. The Democrat controlled Congress did just that when they rolled back the salary for the benefit of one of their own – Hillary Clinton.
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The Emoluments Clause, says that no member of Congress can be appointed to a government post if that job’s pay was increased during the lawmaker’s current term.
In other words, Clinton, D-N.Y., is ineligible to serve in the post because she was serving in Congress when former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s salary was raised to $191,300. So to circumvent the law, the Democrat controlled House and Senate secretly and unlawfully rolled the secretary of state’s salary back to $186,600, its level in January 2007 when Clinton began her second 6 year Senate term.
Even at the lower rate, Clinton still got a raise over her Senate salary. Senators made $169,300 in 2008. Hillary Clinton is disqualified from being Secretary of State because she broke a 6 year contract she made with the people of New York to take a higher paying job. According to U.S. law Senators and Representatives cannot resign to take newly created or higher-paying political positions. As per U.S. law Hillary Clinton must wait until the conclusion of the 6 year term for which she was elected.