President Obama missed his chance yesterday to use the “Roosevelt precedent” to appoint Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or make any recess appointment. But the Wall Street Journal reported that the President got legal clearance to basically ignore the pro forma sessions being held by Congress, enabling a recess appointment at any point in this holiday break.

During the recess, the President has a number of opportunities to make recess appointments. He could simply determine that the pro forma sessions being used to keep Congress active were insufficient to prevent recess appointments. He could use his Constitutional power to adjourn Congress. Or he could follow the Teddy Roosevelt precedent. But it appears he won’t.

The recess appointment fight nominally only concerns Richard Cordray, the nominee to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Republicans want to block his confirmation because they stop the agency from gaining regulatory powers over non-bank financial institutions if they remain without a director. But a number of other nominees are caught in the crossfire of this fight, in particular nominees to lead other key financial industry NLRB regulators.

As is typical at the end of the year, Harry Reid attempted to clear out a backlog of uncontroversial Presidential appointments before the holiday break. But Mitch McConnell would not allow it. He wanted assurances, instead, that the President would not seek out any recess appointments during the break, and he objected to moving the outstanding nominees until that time.

This may come as a surprise, since throughout this year Republicans have been able to use pro forma sessions to never take Congress into recess, thereby blocking recess appointments. Indeed, that was the plan for this holiday break as well.

The Obama Administration, expecting that we’re in an age where the normal rules of politics apply and not an age of nullification, nominated two labor officials for open slots on the National Labor Relations Board. That board will see previous recess appointments expire at the end of the year, leaving it without a quorum and unable to function. The two appointees would fill the Democratic spots on the board.

Describing the blockade of Richard Cordray to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as a form of nullification sounds accurate to me. Cordray is almost an afterthought, as Republicans disagree with the concept of a federal agency that looks out for consumers. So they plan to stop confirmation of any director, which in this case holds off consumer protection regulation of non-bank financial institutions, unless it is gutted.

Republicans claim to support the concept of extending the payroll tax cut for 2012, but oppose the pay-for in this bill of a 1.9% surtax on millionaires. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon already thought he was paying twice that much, according to remarks from earlier today.

Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau unveiled a prototype credit card agreement designed to ease understanding of obligations. The CFPB will test the statement with the Pentagon Federal Credit Union, one of the largest in the nation. This comes just before a Senate vote on Richard Cordray’s nomination to head the CFPB.

Republicans in the US Senate filibustered the nomination of Caitlin Halligan to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, despite her receiving majority support from the Senate on a cloture vote. The nomination failed to achieve cloture by a count of 54-45.

Democrats released the details of the compromise measure for the payroll tax cut, and there are basically three components to the pay-for for the legislation, which now only increases and extends the employee side of the payroll tax cut.