The Volokh Conspiracy, our favorite constitutional law blog, points out a slight snag for Barack Obama's choice for State: Senator Clinton is constitutionally ineligible. Here is Article I, Section 6 of said fundamental law:
Clause 2: 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.
Now, Hillary Clinton is a Senator, and the time for which she has been elected extends until 2012. "Emoluments" means compensation. This year the salary of the Secretary of State was increased by an executive order (issued by the President under U.S. statutes). From Al Kamen in the Washington Post's The Trail:
In Clinton's case, during her current term in the Senate, which began in January 2007, cabinet salaries were increased from $186,600 to $191,300.
That's four thousand, seven hundred dollars more in emoluments. Hence, Ms. Clinton is quite obviously ineligible for the office. The reasons for the "exclusive clause" are fairly obvious, but let Mr. Madison speak for them. From The Founder's Constitution:
Mr. Madison. Some gentlemen give too much weight and others too little to this subject. If you have no exclusive clause, there may be danger of creating offices or augmenting the stipends of those already created, in order to gratify some members if they were not excluded. Such an instance has fallen within my own observation. I am therefore of opinion, that no office ought to be open to a member, which may be created or augmented while he is in the legislature.
In other words, Madison did not think that the exclusion went far enough to prevent corruption. He was afraid that Congress would create cushy federal offices for their members to move into when they are tired of working. In the Virginia Ratifying Conventions, Patrick Henry made the same complaint:
Does not this plainly say that, if an office be not created during the time for which he is elected, or if its emoluments be not increased during such time, he may accept of it? I can see it in no other light.
Like Madison, Henry would exclude anyone who serves in Congress from any office created by Congress. That would, I suppose, leave only elected offices and judicial appointments. James Wilson disagrees. Again from the Records of the Constitutional Convention:
[W]e ought to hold forth every honorable inducement for men of abilities to enter the service of the public.--This is truly a republican principle. Shall talents, which entitle a man to public reward, operate as a punishment? While a member of the legislature, he ought to be excluded from any other office, but no longer. Suppose a war breaks out and a number of your best military characters were members; must we lose the benefit of their services?
It is pretty clear from all this what the clause means. However, there is a way out: the so-called "Saxbe Fix." Again from The Trail:
That "fix" came in 1973, when President Nixon nominated Ohio Sen. William Saxbe (R) to be attorney general after the famed "Saturday Night Massacre" during the Watergate scandal. Saxbe was in the Senate in 1969 when the AG's pay was raised. Congress acceded to Nixon's request to lower the attorney general's salary to its pre-1969 level. Apparently this had been done once before, in 1909, for a senator in line to be secretary of state. And President George H.W. Bush, as he was leaving office, approved a Saxbe fix so that Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen could move from the Senate to take that job.
I am pretty sure we are in for another "Saxbe fix". The question is whether the fix is constitutional or not. Eugene Volokh makes this argument for it:
I think the phrase "the Emoluments whereof shall have been encreased during such time" is ambiguous. It could mean "shall have been increased at least once," or it could mean "shall have been increased on net." If you're thinking about buying a computer, for instance, and you ask "Has the price of this computer been increased during the last year?," it seems to me quite possible that you would mean "Has it been increased so that it now costs more than it cost a year ago?," rather than "Has it been increased at all, even if the price hike was entirely rolled back a month later?" In fact, the "on net" reading strikes me as more plausible than the rival reading.
I can't tell for certain what the founders would have made of this distinction, but it seems clearly in line with common sense. The purpose of the clause was to prevent Congress from using their power to create offices to provide gifts for themselves out of the public purse. As for the mechanism, I find myself agreeing with Patrick Henry (it was bound to happen sooner or later): "if an office be not created during the time for which [s]he is elected, or if its emoluments be not increased during such time, [s]he may accept of it."
There is no important substantive controversy here. No serious person thinks that Senator Clinton's appointment is some kind of scheme to feather her monetary nest. But the Constitution represents the will of We the People. It is binding on Congress, convenient and sensible or not. So I think Ms. Clinton's salary will have to be fixed at the figure that stood when she was first elected. Heck, even the Daily Kos agrees. So if anyone gives you gruff on this, tell 'em me, Kos, and Patrick Henry all said so.
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