From the Speaker's Desk

Day 1,189, 18:57 • Published in USA USA • by Cromstar

As the Speaker of the House, I have an obligation to put this out there. Many other Congressmen and non-Congressmen of all natures have said their own thoughts, feelings, and opinions on the matters at hand. I’m not here to give my opinion, really. I’m doing this to present some facts based on my long-term service to the eUSA.

I write this not just to Congressmen, but to the President, the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the military, the party presidents, the tireless workers in the military and executive, and to all the rest of the American citizenry.

I present to you, the official statement and response from the Office of the Speaker of the House concerning recent Congressional action and the Constitution.

Recently, a proposal was presented to Congress to amend the Constitution of the eUSA with regards to the military. The lengthy discussion and debate will be public soon, assuming it isn’t already by the time you read this, and the final Amendment as passed can be found here. I’m not going to quote it here, you’ll just have to read it there.

Some have argued about this from all sorts of points, so I’m here to set the record straight.

The portion of the Constitution regarding the military was written for the 3rd eUSA Constitution. That Constitution was written during an IRC jam session by Max McFarland 2, Eugene Harlot, and myself as the main actors, with a number of other Congress and government personnel involved during the course of a long, long night.

Sadly, Harlot and MM2 have left, leaving me as the only author left to speak out on it. Frankly, at the time we wrote that, there was a lot of talk about the being worried the Executive was going to try and screw around with it at all levels. That’s why Harlot encouraged Congress to stop that from happening. We didn’t want the POTUS to try and run rough-shod all over the military and gum up some things (like internal promotion systems) as had been hinted at.

That was almost a year ago. The situation has changed greatly. When that was written, the military was headed up by different people doing different things, and Congress had an attitude of letting things roll. This was pre-V2. It was pre-PANAM. It was before we made a habit of filling all Congressional election spots with blockers every month. It was before a lot of stuff.

With the upheavals and changes over the months, its not surprising that people and opinions have shifted. Congress has become more involved and more active, perhaps the most active I’ve ever seen it in my two years of experience with Congress. They are demanding accountability that previous Congress’ have deliberately and willfully desired not to exercise.

For a new Congress to change that is not wrong, or biased, or unfair, or unconstitutional. In fact, it’s the first time in a long time they’ve decided to do their job, which is to account for how they choose to spend the taxpayers money.

I will not deny that recent events have catapulted the issue to the forefront. However, this is not the fault of Congress. Congress did not perform these acts. The military did. Congress did not accuse the military of unfair or unjust practices. Citizens and the public did. Congress merely acted upon these concerns. That’s their job.

I’m not going to pretend some people aren’t opportunistically using this as a way to get back at the military for past grievances. There are very likely some who are. However, that does not account for everyone, or even most of the people involved. Additionally, its takes balls to accuse someone such as Ligtreb of doing that. I dare anyone on the JCS to accuse Ligtreb of using this to grind a personal axe.

So on to the crux of the issue: what does this new Amendment do?

In short, it changes things at the top without directly changing things at the bottom. It redefines the job of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to increase his role as a mediator, point of contact, advisor, and referee between the President, JCS, and Congress. Many members of the JCS have complained about the lack of communication, but they can relax now. There’s someone who’s job description includes that now. Good news there!

Secondly, it provides some extra guidelines for the JCS to provide for increased accountability and to prevent abuses of certain powers by that body in the future. First, the CJCS position now carries a term length of 3 months, with a restriction that a person may not serve more than 2 terms consecutively. It also includes provisions ensuring the JCS continues to maintain branch oversight and control, and reinforces the COs of each branch as the top of the CoC except for the POTUS. In other words, the CJCS does not tell COs how to run their own branches.

A more controversial provision allows for Congress to remove any member of the JCS by a 2/3rds supermajority vote. Many have claimed this will lead to political fighting with and within the JCS, or that this is aimed at specific people right now. To those comments, I say, shut the hell up.

You’ve no clue what you are talking about if you honestly think that claim will fly around here. Congress has had this authority over POTUS’ from day 1, and it has yet to be abused there. In fact, the bar for removing a JCS is higher than that for removing a POTUS. A POTUS impeachment requires 2/3rds of votes cast to be a ‘Yes.’ That means if 3 people vote, and 2 say Yes, the POTUS is impeached.

The removal of a JCS member requires 2/3rds of all of Congress vote yes. For a Congress of 59 people like we’ve had for the past month, that means you’d need a minimum of 40 people to vote yes on the impeachment. That’s a pretty high barrier to reach even for the terrible elitists we are.

While there are many powers extended to the POTUS over the military, as he is the Commander-in-Chief, I’m not going to discuss them for now. That’s for the POTUS to decide how to handle and I leave that to him for now.

However, as Speaker of the House, it is my job to enforce the rules as passed by Congress. I have not hesitated to do so this month, having already been forced to strip two members of Congress of all their privileges as Congressmen due to their poor and childish behavior. Now I find myself in the unenviable situation of having to enforce these rules over the JCS en masse.

I have no desire for a conflict with the JCS. I will do my duty, though. I’m sure the military can understand that I too have my job to carry out, and I’ve always done so in the past in my various and sordid roles throughout the government. If you don’t believe me, you can ask the dozens of high-ranking executive, Congressional, and military personnel I’ve worked with, including CJCSes and JCS members, POTUSes, other Speakers of the House, and many, many others.

At this point, it is up the JCS to carry through with the law, and I fully expect them to do so, since its in the interests of the nation to get onto the important business of kicking Serbia’s rear-ends.

In the meantime, there will be continued questions and problems over various issues, and I’m sure that Congress is not done with any of these. The military is not alone in this issue. If you don’t believe me, ask A^2 what it was like to be running Arm America with Congress breathing down his neck. OMS is also coming under increased scrutiny lately, especially in light of the situation with INCI.

In short, for the first time in over 2 years (which is like, almost a century in RL terms according to some calculations), Congress is doing stuff. So, for all the hundreds of people who complained that Congress did nothing, I have but one thing left to say:

Be careful what you wish for.

Cromstar
Current Speaker of the House