This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, January 16, 2014.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The President has claimed the power to declare when the Senate is and is not in session for the purposes of choosing high-level

appointees.

The Supreme Court is currently weighing that issue.

It could be the most egregious power grab of this President's time in office, says

Trevor Burris, a research fellow at the Cato Institute.

You say that this is the most egregious of the president's unconstitutional actions.

Well, he essentially decided that he has the power to declare whether or not the Senate

is in session.

And if you think about something that's just a, if that were to be the rule of the Constitution

a really bad rule of government something that the framers would never ever endorse when you

have a checks and balances system and the legislator is supposed to check the president

and the president comes in and says I'm going to decide if you're really in session and

in order to make these recess appointments that what he had to do he had to write these sessions out of existence, say that they were sham

sessions, and that he would be the one who determines if the Senate is really in session.

So historically, what do we know about Senate sessions?

A Senate session is declared by the Senate,

and there's a lot of different types of them.

They have an official session, when you, you know, the 68th Senate or the 69th

Senate they have an official one and they have a break between the sessions and

those are called recesses and the president's recess appointments power is

...