Posted on 02/18/2021 4:44:05 AM PST by Kaslin
When Barack Obama became president in 2009, he moved quickly to overturn many of George W. Bush's policies. During his first 100 days, Obama issued executive orders revoking the Bush administration's limitations on stem cell research, easing marijuana prosecutions, and endorsing a United Nations declaration on gay rights that Bush had declined to sign. Other Obama directives restored support for organizations that provided abortions, loosened restrictions on Cuba, and stopped requiring contractors to notify employees of their right to limit payments to labor unions.
Eight years later, the worm turned.
When Donald Trump took office in 2016, he set about reversing Obama's legacy. He issued executive decrees doing away with his predecessor's requirement that companies report payroll data by race and gender; announced his intention to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement and the Iran nuclear deal; granted approval for construction of the Keystone XL pipeline; and rescinded Obama's guidelines on investigating campus sexual assault allegations.
Now it's Joe Biden's turn to govern by decree. In his first two weeks as president, he signed 50 executive orders and memorandums, many directly overturning policies implemented under Trump. Among his changes: rejoining the Paris accord, ending construction of a border wall, canceling the Keystone pipeline permit, reversing the ban on travelers from several majority-Muslim countries, and again permitting support for organizations that promote abortion.
This has become the norm in American politics, and it should disturb anyone who values representative government and constitutional order — regardless of partisan loyalty. Americans who condemned Obama for bypassing Congress and unilaterally changing policy should have been just as unhappy when Trump later did the same thing. If a president's moves to govern by diktat were alarming under Trump, they should be no less worrisome under Biden. Yet too many pundits and politicos condemn executive imperiousness only when it comes from presidents they don't like. When they support the occupant of the White House, their response is more like that of Paul Begala, one of Bill Clinton's political advisers, who in 1998 summarized the appeal of presidential reliance on executive orders.
"Stroke of the pen, law of the land," Begala told the New York Times. "Kind of cool."
The Founding Fathers didn't think so. Article I of the Constitution begins: "All legislative powers shall be vested in a Congress of the United States." For most of American history, it was taken for granted that Congress would play a decisive role — often the decisive role — in crafting government policy. From settling the West to banning competition-killing monopolies, from the Pure Food and Drug Act to the passage of civil rights, many of the nation's most substantive and far-reaching changes were hammered out through the legislative process, with Congress indispensable to the process.
In recent decades, however, Congress has become almost an afterthought. On the presidential campaign trail, candidates now routinely promise to make sweeping changes in public policy through executive orders, often vowing to do so on their first day in the White House, or to act unilaterally if the legislative branch doesn't give them what they want.
But there are three serious problems with that approach.
First, it is antidemocratic by definition: It bypasses the deliberation, compromise, and consensus-building that are inherent to legislating.
Second, it is polarizing. Each new president now commences his term by signing orders to undo much of what his predecessor leaves behind. The fixation on executive orders contributes to a zero-sum mindset in American politics, with each party determined not merely to advance its political agenda but also to eradicate the agenda of the other party.
Third, it entrenches instability. Executive orders are canceled as easily as they were created. Shifts in policy prove ephemeral. What is America's policy on a border wall? On the Keystone pipeline? On Iran's nuclear development? When the answers to such questions are a matter of presidential caprice rather than an act of Congress, they aren't answers at all — merely holding patterns apt to change after the next election.
Biden, the first president since Lyndon Johnson to be elected following a long career in Congress, might reflect on LBJ's approach to achieving enduring change.
In a 1973 interview with Walter Cronkite, Johnson explained why he had insisted that civil rights reforms be grounded in legislation. Black leaders had "wanted me to issue an executive order and proclaim this by presidential edict," he recounted. "But I didn't think it would be very effective if the Congress had not legislated, and I didn't want to . . . start running the government by executive order." Legislation is harder, but it lasts.
Biden surely understands this. "We're a democracy. We need consensus," he said during his run for the White House. Make that your mantra, Mr. President. Put down the pen with which you've been signing executive orders, and focus on legislation instead. It will be more challenging to work through Congress. But the legacy you craft will have far more legitimacy. And your successor won't be able to undo it with the stroke of a pen.
Thanks to the Deep State, EOs by Obama and Biden are obeyed immediately and without question. Trump’s were slow-walked and held up by Federal judges. Even if they only rescinded their EOs.
Who needs a President when you’ve got a dicktater?
Before its over: Joe Biden, the worst, most ignorant, and stupid president ever.
Before its over: Camelface Harris, the worst, most ignorant, stupid, and the most evil President ever!
The stage is now set for President Comancho to step up in the form of the Rock, aka Dwayne Johnson.
Good news is that the Old Republic will be over.
The stage is now set for President Comancho to step up in the form of the Rock, aka Dwayne Johnson.
Accept no substitutes - we want the real President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho!
The Republic was over the minute both parties violated the Constitution by swearing in the Kenyan from Indonesia.
Obama is not a natural born citizen.
Imagine a bay. There’s no water in it yet and you can see the wavy nature of the underlying terrain. Now, imagine there are rocks of every size scattered evenly across the undulating terrain. Now, add the water.
A handful of rocks stick above the water. They are problems in the mechanization of our society. We’ll label a few. A tall one is executive orders. Another might be oligarchic control over media. If we slowly lower the water level we see, perhaps, intelligence agencies with third and fourth generation leadership...that’s right, the same jobs being essentially handed down through families trained up in who-knows-what concepts and ideologies.
The tall rock, Executive Orders, is used by one side to attempt countering the way smaller rocks shift the tides. The other side uses it to cement its control over money and policy.
Everything that happens now most often a result of whatever came before. Carter gave us Reagan. Bush gave us Clinton. Clinton gave us another Bush...*that is so wrong.* Bush gave us Obama. Obama gave us Trump. The sequence breaks here as China and a bunch of oligarchic tech billionaires gave us Biden.
So, first problem to fix is the voting system. As for executive orders. In engineering control theory you want a stable system. If the system is supposed to oscillate, you want a controlled oscillation. If, with each cycle, the oscillation increases, the system will tear itself apart.
Any society will fail when the leadership of that society is more concerned with getting their way than they are with the safety and prosperity of the society they govern. I don’t believe, for example, that I have ever heard Nancy Pelosi say anything about the safety and prosperity of America unless it was couched in terms attacking the other side. As for any true conservatives that survive in our government, it’s hard to be concerned with the overall safety and prosperity of America if you are up to your bunghole in alligators.
A friend sends me articles and usually signs off with, “We are so screwed.”
According to U.S. Title Code , executive orders are for government offices, ONLY.
Therefore, the false president can write all he wants that he thinks are affecting the public, and we all can smile and say PHOOEY!!!
You are exactly right!
Unfortunately, our “politicians” are now all for our nations laws being made by Executive Orders now. They have NO problem with that.
But... doesn’t that practice make the House and Senate irrelevant?
“But... doesn’t that practice make the House and Senate irrelevant?” Why do they care? They sit on their thrones and collect their “payments”...
There is nothing slow Joe has signed that Trump cannot undo in 10 minutes.
Biden should be Hooked on Phonics not illegal executive orders.
The fitst time a PFC gets charged by the feds for not following an E.O., I dost thinketh things wouldst stinketh the most.
Where is the list of them?
I wonder what HIS ‘gimmick’ will be?
I wonder what HIS ‘gimmick’ will be?\
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See “Idiocracy” for further details
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