by Ken Klukowski
TownHall.com
December 8, 2009
The Supreme Court heard arguments in a case over an executive-branch agency that is completely outside presidential control. Team Obama argued that the Court should keep it that way, leaving in place an agency that meddles in business affairs, but cannot be stopped by the public and for which Obama cannot be blamed.
And one other thing: It’s unconstitutional.
On Dec. 7, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Co. Accountability Oversight Board (PCAOB, usually called “peek-a-boo”). At issue was the constitutionality of a bureaucratic mess that Congress invented in 2002 as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley federal law that was hastily passed in the aftermath of the corporate scandals involving Enron and Worldcom.
Sarbanes-Oxley created this oversight board, the members of which are chosen by majority vote of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). PCAOB has intrusive power over public accounting firms, and through them broad regulatory power involving publicly-traded companies.
The lawyer for the challengers, Michael Carvin, summed up his case in his opening argument: “The board is unique among federal regulatory agencies in that the president can neither appoint nor remove its members, nor does he have any ability to designate the chairman or review the work product, so he is stripped of the traditional means of control that he has over the traditional independent agencies.”
The rest is at TownHall.com
