Wall Street
Journal...
Strassel:
Obama’s Imperial Presidency
When
Congress won’t do what he wants, he ignores it and acts anyway.
By
Kimberley A. Strassel
Editor:
Some of this statements of ‘fact’ have not been verified, possibly
because they
might have “gotten by me.” It should be noted, however, that the trend
that has
been outlined below is frightening.
The
ObamaCare litigation is history, with the president’s takeover of the
health
sector deemed constitutional. Now we can focus on the rest of the Obama
imperial presidency.
Where, you
are wondering, have you recently heard that term? Ah, yes. The
“imperial
presidency” of George W. Bush was a favorite judgment of the left about
our
43rd president’s conduct in war, wiretapping and detentions. Yet say
this about
Mr. Bush: His aggressive reading of executive authority was limited to
the area
where presidents are at their core power—the commander-in-chief
function.
By
contrast, presidents are at their weakest in the realm of domestic
policy—subject to checks and balances, co-equal to the other branches.
Yet this
is where Mr. Obama has granted himself unprecedented power. The health
law and
the 2009 stimulus package were unique examples of Mr. Obama working
with
Congress. The more “persistent pattern,” Matthew Spalding recently
wrote on the
Heritage Foundation blog, is “disregard for the powers of the
legislative
branch in favor of administrative decision making without—and often in
spite
of—congressional action.”
Put another
way: Mr. Obama proposes, Congress refuses, he does it anyway.
For
example, Congress refused to pass Mr. Obama’s Dream Act, which would
provide a
path to citizenship for some not here legally. So Mr. Obama passed it
himself
with an executive order that directs officers to no longer deport
certain
illegal immigrants. This may be good or humane policy, yet there is no
reading
of “prosecutorial discretion” that allows for blanket immunity for
entire
classes of offenders.
Mr. Obama
disagrees with federal law, which criminalizes the use of medical
marijuana.
Congress has not repealed the law. No matter. The president instructs
his
Justice Department not to prosecute transgressors. He disapproves of
the
federal Defense of Marriage Act, yet rather than get Congress to repeal
it, he
stops defending it in court. He dislikes provisions of the federal No
Child
Left Behind Act, so he asked Congress for fixes. That effort failed, so
now his
Education Department issues waivers that are patently inconsistent with
the statute.
Similarly,
when Mr. Obama wants a new program and Congress won’t give it to him,
he
creates it regardless. Congress, including Democrats, wouldn’t pass his
cap-and-trade legislation. His Environmental Protection Agency is now
instituting it via a broad reading of the Clean Air Act. Congress,
again
including members of his own party, wouldn’t pass his “card-check”
legislation
eliminating secret ballots in union elections. So he stacked the
National Labor
Relations Board (NLRB) with appointees who pushed through a “quickie”
election
law to accomplish much the same. Congress wouldn’t pass “net
neutrality”
Internet regulations, so Mr. Obama’s Federal Communications Commission
did it
unilaterally.
In January,
when the Senate refused to confirm Mr. Obama’s new picks for the NLRB,
he
proclaimed the Senate to be in “recess” and appointed the members
anyway,
making a mockery of that chamber’s advice-and-consent role. In June, he
expanded the definition of “executive privilege” to deny House
Republicans
documents for their probe into the botched Fast and Furious drug-war
operation,
making a mockery of Congress’s oversight responsibilities.
This
president’s imperial pretensions extend into the brute force the
executive
branch has exercised over the private sector. The auto bailouts turned
contract
law on its head, as the White House subordinated bondholders’ rights to
those
of its union allies. After the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the
Justice
Department leaked that it had opened a criminal probe at exactly the
time the
Obama White House was demanding BP suspend its dividend and cough up
billions
for an extralegal claims fund. BP paid. Who wouldn’t?
And it has
been much the same in his dealings with the states. Don’t like
Arizona’s plans
to check immigration status? Sue. Don’t like state efforts to clean up
their
voter rolls? Invoke the Voting Rights Act. Don’t like state authority
over
fracking? Elbow in with new and imagined federal authority, via federal
water
or land laws.
In so many
situations, Mr. Obama’s stated rationale for action has been the same:
We tried
working with Congress but it didn’t pan out—so we did what we had to
do. This
is not only admission that the president has subverted the legislative
branch,
but a revealing insight into Mr. Obama’s view of his own importance and
authority.
There is a
rich vein to mine here for GOP nominee Mitt Romney. Americans have a
sober
respect for a balance of power, so much so that they elected a
Republican House
in 2010 to stop the Obama agenda. The president’s response? Go around
Congress
and disregard the constitutional rule of law. What makes this executive
overreach doubly unsavory is that it’s often pure political payoff to
special
interests or voter groups.
Mr. Obama
came to office promising to deliver a new kind of politics. He did—his
own,
unilateral governance.
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