The Hill News

When Newt Gingrich told Mitt Romney to “cut the pious baloney” at the second New Hampshire Republican debate, he wasn’t referring to the baloney
that Romney and others have been talking about the National Labor Relations Board, but he should have been. For the NLRB, 2012 has started just as 2011 ended â€" with more politically motivated attacks chock full of pious baloney from anti-union Republicans.

First, there’s the over-the-top reaction to the President’s decision to make three recess appointments (2 Democrats, 1 Republican) to the NLRB on January 4. Republicans had been holding pro forma sessions every three days since December 16, at which no business was conducted, and claimed that the Senate was not been in recess and the president could not make appointments. Perhaps the best expression of pious baloney came from Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.), supported by 71 other House Republicans, who announced she would introduce a resolution condemning! the appointments when Republicans returned to Washington â€" i.e., when they were no longer in recess. Not far behind in the baloney stakes was Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.), chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, who called the appointments “an affront to the will of the American people.”

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