In other words, the rules don’t apply to them.
Via Daily Caller:
In response to President Obama’s recess appointments, made while the Senate was in a pro forma session, House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Larson of Connecticut told The Daily Caller that he would “prefer everything happen in regular order.” The president, though, was justified in his actions, he said, since Republicans have been blocking his appointees.
“Of course, we’d love to see regular order, and I dare say so with the president, but when you block these people, when you can’t fill these positions and there seems to be more than a veiled attempt to prevent people from doing their job in terms of the oversight that needs to take place on Wall Street, then of course it was a timely thing for the president to do,” Larson told TheDC on Capitol Hill.
In 2007, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid decried the use of recess appointments and vowed to keep the Senate in a pro forma session as a way to block Republican President George W. Bush’s appointees.