[A post carried on Capital Gains & Games]

Last week’s effort by the House GOP leadership to embarrass the Obama administration on Libya may have had some success politically but it has the potential to backfire legally big time.

Just to review: Knowing that it would be voted down, the House leadership held a vote last week on legislation that, if enacted, would have provided official congressional support for U.S. military activities in Libya. As expected, the bill was overwhelming defeated.

But…in what could be one of the classic overreaches of all time, the leadership then held a separate vote on another bill that, had it been enacted, would have stopped any federal money from being spent on Libya and it too was voted down. The problem for the GOP is that the courts and the Government Accountability Office have consistently held that the most recently considered legislation is the one that expresses current congressional intent. In this case that means that the failed attempt to cut off funding for Libya would likely be taken by the courts as the real expression of what Congress wants to do.

In other words, the House may have voted against what in effect was the “authorization” for the activities in Libya, but it then voted for what effectively was the appropriation for those same activities.

This is actually a widely misunderstood part of the federal budget process. The U.S. Constitution only requires an appropriation; the authorization is a congressionally created requirement. There have been legal challenges to spending for programs that have not been both authorized and appropriated, but the courts have generally determined that, in the absence of an authorization, the appropriation, that is, the most recent expression of congressional intent, serves as both.

All of this is somewhat academic in this case because the Senate doesn’t seem to have any interest in taking up the bill to authorize the Libyan activities or defund the spending and, even if it did, the president almost certainly wouldn’t sign it. But even if the Senate followed the House’s lead by defeating the authorization and it was not vetoed, a lawsuit challenging the funding on authorization grounds would very likely be decided in the administration’s favor because of the second vote the House GOP leadership forced.

The ironies about the current debt ceiling fight abound. As my column from today’s Roll Call shows, not only has the debt ceiling not always been linked with deficit reduction, but the GOP is trying both to deny and insist that not increasing the government’s borrowing limit by August 2 will cause real damage.

Qorvis and National Journal’s Hotline will be hosting the second (technically, the third if you count the incredible party/quiz show we had last month) event in our “Road to 2010″ series. This uber-political wonk gathering will address the role of polling and pollsters and how they will relate to the upcoming election.

Qorvis Partner Stan Collender made some interesting comments in a PR Week article today, “Public affairs pros discover new areas of opportunity.” Stan discusses the blurring of the line between lobbying and public affairs communications support, and the resulting benefit:

“Public affairs communications, where you raise visibility of an issue in a way that policymakers can’t ignore, has become increasingly popular,” Collender says, adding that Op-Eds and news stories produce the best results. “This cuts across all issues that are on the front burner—taxes, spending, financial services—and others that proponents would like to move to the front burner…. Washington is now the center of the business and financial universe,” Collender says. “Public affairs communications needs will be substantial for quite some time.”

PR Week has released its annual Agency Business Report and listed Qorvis as the 5th largest independent communications agency in the U.S., up from the number six slot last year. With 15% growth and very low staff turnover in a down economy, this speaks greatly about the strength of our team and business model. It also reinforces the recognition we recieved by the Holmes Report, which has named Qorvis “Public Affairs Agency of the Year.”

You may have seen that Qorvis has been named “Public Affairs Agency of the Year” by the Holmes Report (originally picked up by Politico). The Holmes Report said:

“…Qorvis is much more than a public affairs firm, with strong corporate and financial communications and even strategic brand marketing capabilities. But it continues to do much of its best work in the broad public affairs arena, such as its efforts on behalf of the American Cable Association (helping small regional operators tell their story to the FCC), the Wireless Innovation Alliance (a broad-based coalition educing legislators and regulators on the potential of white space technology), and the Hope Now Alliance (a coalition of mortgage lenders explaining the industry’s efforts to address the housing crisis). Overall growth in 2008 was about 15 percent—with fees of around $35 million, the firm is the sixth largest independent in the U.S.—and there was new business from the Society for Human Resource Management, the Concord Coalition, the Committee for Responsible Federal Budget, washingtonpost.com, and Sun Microsystems. Qorvis also expanded its strategic capabilities with the addition of its own in-house polling and research company, Clarus Research Group.”

We’re very proud of this distinction, which builds on an already strong year. And there’s more good news ahead…

Although I will primarily be covering news and events at Qorvis, occasionally I’ll comment on governmental activities—a tempting topic for someone at a public affairs firm in Washington, DC. This will mostly be done with history in mind.

What caught my eye this morning is that, in addition to Valerie Jarrett being tapped to serve as “senior adviser and assistant to the president for intergovernmental relations and public liaison”, Mr. Biden is also going to have an adviser for Intergovernmental Relations. 

Following the meeting yesterday of Mr. Obama, Mr. Biden and the state governors, there was much to-do over the attention given to maintaining relations on this level. So perhaps they are aiming to have the next Vice President do some additional liaison work—which would be an interesting concept.

The current Vice President did not have such a position on his staff. Clearly, however, the Biden folks are thinking of something somewhat different. Obviously, each and every Vice President is completely different from every other Vice President. And what we’ve become used to with Mr. Cheney will certainly not continue.
 
For example:

• John Nance Garner spent most of his Vice Presidency ruing the fact he’d given up being Speaker of the House to become Vice President. 
• Henry Wallace under FDR had no interest whatsoever in the usual Vice Presidential tasks, such as presiding over the Senate or running for President himself. He had a deep interest in South America and traveled there—becoming the first Vice President to speak to a Spanish group in their own language. In the summer of 1944, he took a three month trip to Soviet Asia and later wrote a book on his visit. This is probably one reason—his lack of interest in politics—why he was bounced from the ticket.
• Hubert Humphrey was genuinely miserable as VP under LBJ. The President kept him on a very short leash indeed. Humphrey never once in four years as Vice President set foot in Camp David.
• Nelson Rockefeller never wanted to be Vice President of anything. He did spend time presiding over the Senate, but infuriated many Senators by making a ruling (quickly reversed) against the filibuster.
• Gerald Ford spent his eight months in office waiting for Nixon’s other shoe to drop.
• Dan Quayle spent his four years handling the Council on Competitiveness and the National Space Council—and he seemed very happy with the assignments. However, the first thing the Clinton Administration did in 1993 was abolish the Council on Competitiveness.

However, the bottom line on the whole issue: if you were the Governor of New York or California or Florida, would you prefer a meeting with Vice President Biden, or with President Obama?  Would you want to talk to the number two man, or would you want to go straight to the Oval Office? I am afraid that human nature being what it is, no Governor is going to want to stop and see the Vice President on anything.  They’re going to want to be able to say to their constituents, “I went straight to the President.”
 
As proof, we can look to At the President’s Side, edited by Timothy Walch, 1997:
 
“As the first man since Calvin Coolidge to step directly into the vice presidency from a statehouse, it was logical that Agnew be put in charge of relations with other state executives. The Office of Intergovernmental Relations was thus created as part of the Office of the Vice President in 1969.  However, Agnew was far from diplomatic in his dealings with his former colleagues. Rockefeller, for example, simply refused to talk to him, sending his messages to Nixon through National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger.”