re: "Ten Congressmen Sue President Obama Over Libya Mission, War Powers Act"

Doug Mataconis at Outside the Beltway ("an online journal of politics and foreign affairs analysis") gives a factual assessment of the suit's merits and standing.

Money quote(s):

"Ten Members of Congress, represented by George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley, have filed a lawsuit against President Obama seeking a Declaratory Judgment that he has violated the War Powers Act by failing to get Congressional approval for the mission in Libya"

It'll be quite interesting to see how (and when) the court rules. Don't be surprised if this gets slow-rolled.

"There are few things more important than the Separation of Powers between the Executive and Legislative Branches and the question of the proper extension of the War Power. Unfortunately, this lawsuit is most likely destined to fail just as all previous attempts to resolve this issue in the Courts have failed."

As much as the judicial branch likes to order one or the other of the executive and legislative branches (not to mention the several states), ordering around both branches seems to be a bit more than they like to bite off.

"(G)iven the Court’s reluctance to get involved in disputes between the Legislative and Executive Branch over war powers in the past, it seems highly unlikely to me that the standing issue will be any less of a problem now than they were in 1999. In some sense the court in Campbell is right, if Congress believes the President has acted unconstitutionally, they have the power to cut off funding for the Libyan action, or even to impeach the President, if they have sufficient votes to support that action. if they don’t, I’m not at all certain that getting judges involved in this particular policy area makes any sense at all."

Good luck with all that.

re: "Overseas Pay"

Smallbits at, er, Small bits ("the bits and pieces that I am okay sharing with the world at large") weighs in from one of the border posts.

Money quote(s):

"Much is being said in FS circles about overseas pay for Foreign Service officers. I have said my piece in several places but I guess I should repeat it here. We are happy to take the 16% overseas pay cut if it is part of true reform and true change. We love our country and we want it to be solvent for our 4 kids. If that means my husband takes a pay cut, he takes a pay cut. And we will make the adjustments necessary. However, in exchange, I want real solutions."

In terms of the overall budget, it's chump change. Still, every little bit helps. And if every other federal employee had their pay reduced by a quarter, that'd amount to quite a bit of change.

Still, it'd also mean I go bankrupt and/or lose my house.

"I want my reps to tackle to big problems facing us: social security, medicare, etc. No window dressing. If they are looking at cutting overseas FSO pay, fine. Cut away. However, what other excesses are they looking at cutting? Are they cutting their own pay? Are they going after the budget items that cost the most? Are they going to cut things Defense asks for even if it affects their own voters?"

This looks suspiciously like one of those "rhetorical questions" that implies its own answer. But that's just my suspicious nature talking; Small bits seems more trusting and nice than I am.

"FSOs are middle class on the pay scale but we do get benefits overseas. Housing is paid, some utilities are paid, school allowances are paid for the kids. (However, kids in the US have free school too. My husband and I pay property taxes and state income taxes that support schools our kids will never use. Also, overseas schools vary widely in quality). In some cases at larger posts, there is a health unit at post. Sometimes not. A lot just depends on where you are. It might be a garden post with great travel opportunities. Or it might be pretty rough like here. You go where you are needed and do the job regardless of where it is. I think FSOs are compensated enough to live fine if we are frugal. There are lots of unseen costs though. For example, we have always driven older cars and driven them for a long time. Our next post will not allow either of our cars and so we have to buy a new one that is less than 3 years old from the manufacture date not the model year. Not something we usually do and completely out of our control. We can make the choice to go carless of course and we might do that."

I love how she drills this down to the personal level to make it less abstract and more like something a reader can relate to.

Personally, my own experience with "garden posts" and "pretty rough" has been that the "garden posts" are way too expensive for a junior officer to take much advantage of, and the "pretty rough" ones can be divided into those where the gunfire is directed at you and those where it's more-0r-less random and/or unaimed (i.e., "happy fire" or "celebratory gunfire").

"The next thing I want is for my reps to realize that the FS is not a walk in the park. As I said, some posts are pretty nice. A lot of posts aren't though. It comes across as insulting to say that FSOs always have these posh wonderful lives. Yeah, it is a really cool life and I am so glad we are here. It comes at a cost sometimes though. Numerous FS bloggers have discussed this. It is not a shock and awe measure. It is simply filling the need to educate Americans, including Congress, about what the FS is and what things happen. For every FSO touring Paris, there is another FSO riding things out in Iraq, in Libya, or on the border. Again, I am so happy that my husband is here doing what he is doing but it isn't free.

The last thing I want from my reps? I want CODELs to mean something. I think any time a politician goes to a place overseas, they should submit a report of how much it really cost (including to State and to the military) and what they accomplished. As a voter and a tax payer, I think this should be public record. I want to know what my reps are accomplishing with these trips. I think they can be very valuable. I don't think anyone can understand the border without spending some time here, on the Mexican side too. I don't think anyone can grasp what a huge job "securing our borders" is without driving along the river here and driving through the wide open ranch land. I would love to have my state reps come here and to give them a personal tour of life around here. My state is heavily affected by immigration and I would love for my reps to see things more first hand. So I think good CODELs are valuable. But they need to be well planned and accounted for. I think there are good Senators and House Representatives who are trying to use CODELs to understand the world better so that they can make better laws."

Codels. A lot of "fact finding" goes on around the world. I've seen congressmen visiting wounded troops whip out their cell phone so a bed-bound soldier or airman could call their family.

(It should be mentioned that the cell phone in question actually belonged to the State Dept. and was provided to the codel by the FSO control officer for that visit. So the taxpayer got the bill. But I still cant' fault their impulse.)

I've also seen codels stumble off their VIP air force jet dead drunk and wanting to have the base rental car opened up in the middle of the night.

What's funny is that both events I mentioned involved the exact same congressmen on the exact same trip.

Conclusion: Our congressmen are human beings, just like regular folks, only with a bit more pull in getting what they want when they want it.

(And no, we talked them out of renting any cars.)

re: "My Letter to Congress Regarding Overseas Comparability Pay"

Four Globetrotters ("The (most likely) incoherent ramblings of a sleep-deprived single mother living overseas with her trio of kiddos.") has written to her congressional representative.

Money quote(s):

"I used a template provided by AFSA here, via Life After Jerusalem and modified it to make it more personal. I urge all of you to take the time and write in. It's long, I know, but I hope that some staffer will take the time to read it. This isn't ill-will on the part of our leaders in Congress. I honestly believe there's no desire to "stick it to the Foreign Service." This is ignorance. This is a product of our own modesty, as Donna at E-Mails From The Embassy stated so eloquently. DOD and other government agencies don't hesitate to toot their own horns and share their life stories. It's time we do the same."

It's a truism within the U.S. Foreign Service that the Department of State is perhaps the only federal department in the executive branch without a domestic constituency. That is, aside from the domestic passport production centers, there aren't any huge contracts being let which employ registered voters back in any congressmen's home districts. Since there are only about 11,000 of us, FS generalists and specialists together, and our home towns (and voter registrations) are scattered across all 50 states, we don't pack much of an electoral punch.

At the working level, at my last post whenever I had a happy and appreciative American citizen bubbling over at the prompt, courteous, and thorough assistance or service he or she had received from our Consular Section, I'd give them a little speech.

I'd tell them that when people didn't like how they were treated or when they didn't get what they wanted (generally because what they wanted was, shall we say, extra-legal; remind me to tell you about my death-threats sometime), they'd often threaten to write their congressman. To which I'd always say it's the right and privilege of every American to write or call their congressional representative and encourage them to do so.

So when I got a happy or satisfied "customer," I'd politely suggest that if they were serious and really liked how they were treated, to think about maybe telling their congressman, because otherwise their congressman won't ever know about his constituents' experience with us and whether their tax dollars were being spent productively out in the far beyond of Country X.

And I'd make sure they had the correct spelling of whomever's name who'd helped them.

"I understand why we will not be receiving cost of living adjustments over the next two fiscal years. However, I am concerned by current legislative proposals that call for reversing a carefully considered bi-partisan plan to modernize the pay system of the Foreign Service that is in the process of being implemented. I have to assume that it is because our mission and our sacrifices are not sufficiently known to Americans, and even to our own representatives in Congress."

"I spent my first Christmas in the Foreign Service at the morgue identifying the body of an American citizen who had been killed in a home invasion. I spent another Christmas in the putrid morgues of a small sub-Saharan African country searching frantically for the wife and two children (ages 4 and 7) of an American citizen who had been aboard an aircraft that crashed upon take off. I loaded my children onto a plane bound for Sierra Leone --where my parents were stationed -- when the situation in Togo, my second post, devolved rapidly after the death of President Eyadema. We may actually be the only people ever to evacuate family to Sierra Leone.

When a member of Congress and her staff were abandoned during this unrest at a downtown hotel by their Government of Togo hosts, I was the only American besides my then-husband, the Regional Security Officer, who could drive an armored vehicle. The Ambassador dispatched me, and I drove through barricades and crowds to reach her and her staff and transport them safely to the Embassy. My husband couldn't go because he was off responding to a distress call from one of our Embassy families. Their house was being invaded.

The mother and two children were holed up in the safehaven while a frenzied group of thugs destroyed their home and personal belongings and worked to break into the safehaven where they were hiding. All of us at the Embassy listened as the frantic calls for help came in over the radio, the children crying in the background. My colleague wept as he heard his wife and children, helpless. My husband knew he had to try and help, even though it would come at great personal danger. He arrived at the house, unarmed due to a policy that did not permit him to carry his service weapon, and engaged at least two dozen thugs. Relying on his training as a former marine, he quickly disarmed one person and used that weapon to disperse the remaining looters. There is no doubt in my mind that had it not been for his intervention, the wife would have been raped or worse, and there is no telling what would have happened to the two children. I waited, bordering on hysteria, by the radio to hear that my husband was okay and that our three children would not be left without a father. He rightfully received the State Department's Heroism Award for his actions on that day.

I, like countless of my colleagues, have defended the United States and had close encounters with those who wanted to do us harm. I remember vividly the day I, a second-tour junior officer, gazed across the bullet proof consular window at a young Nigerian man who simply wanted to go the United States to "visit". I determined he did not meet the standards to qualify for a visa to the United States, and denied him. His name was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a.k.a the underwear bomber." (Typeface bolded by CAA.)

Every FSO has stories like this. Every single one. Four Globetrotter's are a little scarier than some because of her African postings as well as her evacuation from Tunisia, but they're pretty much of a piece with the rest of ours.

As I mentioned recently, this past month marked the year anniversary of a plane crash case I worked as a consular officer, where several American citizens were fatalities. One thing I didn't mention was that the pilot, also killed, was the father of a personal friend of mine. That was not the first time I visited that particular Third World morgue nor was it the last. As unfailingly kind and courteous as the morgue staff always was, I was never happy to be there. But I'd go again in a heartbeat if that's where my duty took me, and expect that it will, at some other post.

"At the height of the revolution, the streets were packed with rioters, soldiers and tanks. Every night for a week my children cowered in a corner listening to the shooting going on around us. There is no 911 over here. If people had chosen to attack our home we -- a single mom with three children -- would have been helpless. Our own armored security vehicles were unable to respond to distress calls. When I was finally able to drive to the Embassy for our evacuation flight, I was stopped at a military check point and had a rifle pointed at my head by an overly eager young soldier.

The Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act of 1990 was adopted as a way to reduce the government-wide disparity between the public and private sectors and is a basic component of salary for all civilian Federal employees, based on annual survey data collected by the Department of Labor. As a result of this law, every federal government employee working in the United States received “locality pay” as part of their salary. Until 2009, the only United States government civilian employees who did not receive this part of their salary were entry-level and mid-level Foreign Service personnel serving their country overseas. All others, including senior level State Department officers, and other agencies represented overseas, such as CIA officers under State Department cover, DOJ and DHS, have locality pay factored into their base salary.

Locality pay for Foreign Service personnel and other federal employees serving in Washington, D.C. is now approximately 25%. Under the law prior to 2009, Foreign Service personnel serving abroad sacrificed this part of their salaries and took large pay cuts to their base salaries. Those posted in Washington earned more money than colleagues posted in Pakistan, Yemen, and Beirut to name a few. As a result, because retirement packages are based upon base pay (including “locality pay”), Foreign Service officers representing their country abroad received smaller retirement packages than their colleagues who stayed in Washington. This was not sustainable and in 2009 a bi-partisan solution was found to correct this policy problem. Closing the pay gap is not a pay raise -- it is a correction of a 17- year-old unintended inequity in the worldwide Foreign Service pay schedule—an inequity that grew every year."

The business model that makes it financially ruinous for a diplomat to take overseas assignments pretty much screams out for correction, don't you think?

"Our oath is pretty similar to another oath I know you are familiar with:

"I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same, that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."

Assignments overseas are increasingly challenging, difficult and in many instances, dangerous. There has been strong bipartisan recognition that it is time to invest in diplomacy and development. Penalizing Foreign Service employees -- specifically those of us at the junior and mid-level -- whose mission is to serve overseas to advance and protect our national interests by cutting our base pay undervalues the importance of our work, widens the gap between those of us serving in the United States and those of us facing hardships and sacrifices overseas and creates real disincentives to serving on the front lines of American diplomacy and development."

No whining, but to put it another way, why would you want to pay "inside-the-beltway" bureaucrats more than your diplomats taking tough posting abroad? Do you perhaps sense there's an insufficiency of inside-the-beltway bureaucrats in Washington?

(Which is not exactly how I see the political winds blowing this year.)

re: "Current Events (Or Why We Deserve This Pay Cut)"

Donna at Email From The Embassy ("After three years in Beijing, we're headed to Amman, Jordan. For family and friends who want to follow our adventures, this is it...") has a great summation and some alarming ideas.

Money quote(s):

"In a nutshell: our pay is on the line. Life After Jerusalem and several other bloggers covered the details, which amount to this: Foreign Service officers currently have to take a steep pay cut when they move from DC to their overseas posts, due to something called "locality pay." Several years ago, when the powers-that-be were convinced this was a problem (why should I move to Yemen, or Libya, or Beijing, or really anywhere, if I'm going to make 25 cents on the dollar more to stay in DC?), they moved to phase in overseas locality pay so that this disparity would disappear over time. But now, led by Mr. Reed, some of our politicians have decided to call this an "automatic pay raise," and they want to do away with it. Only for State Department employees, mind you: other agencies overseas get this locality pay, and no one's talking about touching it."

Great summary. Covers all the bases. Well, doesn't mention that the pay gap doesn't apply to members of the Senior Foreign Service; for some reason they never lost out on this.

Who are the SFS? They're the Foreign Service equivalent to the Civil Service's Senior Executive Service (SES); in other words, State's flag officers (i.e., the equivalent of generals and admirals). It is from this group that principal officers (when they are not political appointees) such as ambassadors and consuls general are chosen.

"all you FSOs out there, are you ready for this? Here's what I think: This is all your fault.

Seriously. Your. Fault.

And here's why.

Whenever Mr. or Ms. Important Politician decides to come to post, you all leap to help out. I've seen this happen at every single post where I've lived. You get a cable that Congressperson So-And-So is coming next week. It's probably a national holiday. Or a weekend. But they're coming. They're flying in business class, and when they arrive, you scramble to meet them. With a motorcade. You take them to meetings with other important people at your post. You sit at their fancy dinners at the Foreign Minister's palace so you can take notes. After you drop them off for the night at their fancy hotels downtown, you slog back to the Embassy to write your cables before making the long trek back to your home in the suburbs somewhere. You kiss your sleeping kids, argue with your spouse about why you couldn't come with her to her doctor's appointment (she doesn't speak the language well, but you do). Then you go to bed.

You wake up before dawn so you can get back to the Embassy and pull cables for the congressperson, who needs to be up on the news as she breakfasts in her hotel. And then you set off for another day in motorcades, running from meetings to lunches to parties to concerts, ignoring the calls from your kids' school, because you know your spouse has that covered and you don't even have time to eat.

While you're doing this, someone else at the Embassy is taking the congressperson's spouse shopping for pearls, and then maybe to a fancy lunch at a local hotspot. It could be the CLO; it could be your wife. But someone is out sightseeing with the congressperson's hangers-on. Maybe a quick visit to the Great Wall, or Petra, or the pyramids. This could be a weekday, or it could be a weekend. Either way, whoever is taking these folks out has cobbled together extra childcare and cancelled that dentist appointment in order to be available.

The visit is over, and the motorcade races to the airport, where Important Person waits in the VIP lounge. Even after Important Person takes that business class ticket and boards the plane, you still sit, and wait. You wait until wheels-up, because that's what you do."

Because it just wouldn't do for there to be a mechanical problem and the plane towed back to the gate and unloaded and an entire congressional delegation stranded at the airport with no local cellphone anymore. Actually describing this gave me a chill, and not in a good, Chris Matthews sort of, way.

I've often maintained that we do ourselves a serious disservice by building and maintaining this sort of artificial bubble for our VIP visitors such as congressmen and STAFDELs. It only creates an unrealistic appreciation on their part for our roles, conditions, and capabilities abroad.

Donna gets this.

"Meanwhile, Important Politician stretches out in his business class seat and listens to his wife talk about the pearls! And the silk scarves! And the amazing food! And IP thinks back to that Foreign Service Officer he just met. And he thinks: what a great life that guy has! He goes to parties at the President's mansion. He drinks fancy wine. He drives around in air conditioned motorcades, with people saluting him as he walks into government buildings. He goes hiking - in the middle of a work day, even! - on the Great Wall. What a cushy life he leads, thinks Important Politician.

So you see, all you Foreign Service Officers out there, it's your fault all of these congresspeople think you deserve a pay cut. They have no idea what work you put into that recent visit. They don't know what you just gave up in order to make sure their visit was a success. They don't understand that your life isn't all cocktail parties interspersed with awesome trips to exotic locations. They don't know that you live in a place where your every move is recorded. Or maybe you live in a place where the locals want you dead. Or you live in a place where your baby has nightmares from the malaria medication. Or your spouse isn't allowed to work because the host government forbids it. Or maybe you're black, and the locals don't like black people. Or maybe you're gay, and that's a punishable offense in your host country. Or you're a woman, so you have to cover up when you walk outside. Or the signs are all in Arabic, so every time you leave the house, you're lost, and you can't ask for directions. Or maybe you went permanently deaf in one ear while you were serving in a country without proper medical care. Important Politician didn't see any of this from the window of the Prime Minister's residence."

&

"(T)hey don't get it, these Important People. They don't know just how hard you work for them, and for your country, because when they show up at your post for a long weekend in December, you work your asses off and not a one of you ever tells them you need to go to your daughter's Christmas pageant, or you need to help your spouse find wrapping paper, or you need to get your sick kid to the doctor. You don't even point out that you're working weekends for these people. You just do the work you're supposed to do, regardless of the weather, the date, the personal sacrifice.

And so they don't know, even when they should, and they just see an easy way to cut some money from the budget that won't impact their constituents. When they make these financial calculations, they don't even see your faces."

re: "Protests here, there and everywhere and the US Government shutdown looms large"

Domani Spero at DiploPundit ("Just one obsessive observer, diplomatic watcher, opinionator and noodle newsmaker monitoring the goings on at Foggy Bottom and the worldwide available universe") has an extremely informative post about federal government shutdowns.

Money quote(s):

"The most recent one occurred in FY1996 for five days between November 13-19, 1995. The second one also in FY1996 was the longest in history, and lasted 21 days between December 15, 1995 - January 6, 1996.

Of course, as soon as the second government shutdown was lifted, the blizzard of 1996, a severe nor'easter arrived and paralyzed the entire East Coast with up to 4 feet of wind-driven snow. Remember that? A big mess all around, and not just the snow, most of it dumped on the GOP lawn."

I remember it well, working at the time as a government contractor. Since my contract remained funded, I continued working during the shutdown, but nearly all of my federal co-workers (I was working "on site" at a departmental headquarters in D.C.) weren't there. It was spooky.

To really enhance the fun, about 50 percent of my reserve battalion was being mobilized during that time period to deploy to Europe as part of Operation Joint Endeavor. Being snowed in (it took them most of a week for the snowplows to reach my apartment parking lot, and then an entire day for me to re-unentomb my car so I could get myself, uniforms, and gear to the reserve center that night) sucked.

"Potentially, all US embassies and consulates will also shutdown if the continuing funding resolution is not extended before Friday, March 4 at 11:59 pm. Since ambassadors are presidential appointees, they will presumably continue working. I suspect that most of the embassy staff will be sent home. Think you might volunteer your service for free to Uncle Sam? Think again. Not possible. "Unless otherwise authorized by law, an agency may not accept the voluntary services of an individual." (31 U.S.C. 1342). Read more here.

US missions will not be able to pay local bills for water, phone, electricity, sewer and other services for the chancery, and all USG properties. Hopefully, your management section already has an excellent working relationship with these service providers and none will cut off essential services to the embassy or embassy housing.

In 1995, all visa applications are walk-in. Today, a good number of consular sections have online appointment systems. Which means, visa appointments will have to be canceled and rescheduled if there is a shutdown. Consular sections may only be open for life and death emergencies. That means lost passport applications, reports of births abroad, adoption cases, notarials, etc. will all have to wait until the Federal government reopens.

Large scale evacuations of US embassy staff and US citizens in whatever is the next domino to fall -- would that be considered "essential?" Don't know if evacuees will be allowed government loans during the shutdown. Don't know what happens if you are on evacuation status in the safehaven destination or back in the US when the government shuts down. Best check with official folks to get answers before window closes for official business.

Members of Congress are exempt from the shutdown furloughs (and will continue to get their paychecks, of course). This means you might still see a CODEL visit in popular destinations like Kabul or Baghdad amidst a federal shutdown. Of course, there won't technically be embassy cars/drivers or control officers for those visits."

Control officers? Where have I heard that term before?

re: "House bill cuts locality pay for Foreign Service officers overseas "

Digger at Life After Jerusalem ("The musings of a Two-Spirit American Indian, Public Diplomacy-coned Foreign Service Officer") explains, as if to a child.*

Money quote(s):

"Because it isn't enough that our pay has been frozen AND that we may have to endure a government shutdown, now we have to take a pay CUT in order to serve overseas. Just an example, our folks serving in Libya make 5% LESS than they would in D.C. Yes, really.And to be clear, this is not a pay raise. It is rectifying a pay CUT. And it is only the mid-level foreign service that takes this pay cut. People serving at our missions overseas with other agencies do not. Neither do members of the Senior Foreign Service."

As a business model, how much sense (if any) does it make to disincentivize the nation's diplomats (except for the Senior Foreign Service, the FS equivalent to generals and admirals) from taking overseas assignments?

Yes, it's an honor to serve.

Yes, there are tens of thousands of people taking the FS exam every year just dying to get into the Foreign Service.

It still makes no sense to penalize the lowest paid of the Foreign Service if they're foolish enough to go abroad to do the nation's business.

"I bet they could save more than that by making the Congressmen and their staffers fly economy class like the rest of us."

I guess that means the Air Force wouldn't need quite so many VIP jets.

_____

*

re: "CLAIMS OF SPITTING ON CONGRESSMAN?"

Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit ("I’m interested in everything, but my chief interest is in the intersection between advanced technologies and individual liberty.") asks an uncomfortable question:

"(I)f it had to pass by a referendum among American voters, would spitting on Congressmen even be a crime?"

Forty years ago (some) American voters were spitting on soldiers returning from Vietnam.

So I'm very loath to recommend that precedent be followed, particularly when I can see it easily spreading further.