“So sue me” is President Obama’s message to Congress. And on Wednesday the House of Representatives took up his taunt, authorizing a lawsuit to challenge the president’s failure to faithfully execute provisions of the Affordable Care Act …
… Article I of the Constitution vests all legislative power in Congress. Article II imposes a duty on the president to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” When a law is unambiguous, the president cannot rewrite it to suit his own preferences. “The power of executing the laws,” as the Supreme Court emphasized in June in “Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA”, “does not include a power to revise clear statutory terms that turn out not to work in practice.” If a law has defects, fixing them is Congress’s business.
…A president who unilaterally rewrites a bad or unworkable law, however, prevents the American people from knowing whether Congress should be praised or condemned for passing it. Such unconstitutional actions can be used to avert electoral pain for the president and his allies. [Source: David B. Rivkin Jr. and Elizabeth Price Foley, in The Wall Street Journal online, 8/1/14]
The issues with Obamacare (i.e., the Affordable Care Act) now go beyond the law itself. Obama’s selective approach to enforcing the law, turning off and on provisions as it suits him, is one of the most blatant examples of unconstitutional behavior on the part of any president in America’s history.
Given the evidence, it’s remarkable that the Republican leadership in Congress does not attempt an impeachment of the President. Remember that impeachment and removal from office are two different things. There’s no possibility of removing Obama from office with Democrats in control of the Senate, where such a vote would take place. But the Republican Speaker of the House’s refusal to consider impeachment proceedings—and instead of them, offer this absurd lawsuit—is almost as reprehensible as Obama’s actions in the first place.
Speaker of the House John Boehner refers to fear of losing seats in the House of Representatives as a reason for not impeaching Obama. If this isn’t an open admission of preferring power over principle, I don’t know what is.
Granted, one has to be in power in order to exercise one’s principles. But exactly what power or principles have the Republicans in the House of Representatives been able to muster since winning office? The deficit, national debt and government spending are higher than ever. The government is beyond bankrupt. Medicare and Social Security are more unsustainable than ever before, and Republican leaders are too timid to advance any alternative to the depraved transfer-of-wealth empire as we know it.
In the era of the Cold War, advocates of appeasing Soviet Russia used to say, “Better Red than dead.” They meant, quite sincerely, that they’d rather risk a Communist dictatorship than provoke or make the Russians angry in any way. You hear the same today about appeasing terrorist regimes like Iran.
Boehner and other Republicans like him operate on the same basic premise. Rather than make Obama mad, they claim, let’s be less “disruptive” and tread a middle ground.
The absurdity of such a policy is easy to prove. Obama and his supporters are chronically angry. They’re mad that we still have as much capitalism as we do. They’re mad that taxes aren’t higher, that spending on social “welfare” isn’t higher than it is, and they’re angry that Americans—who still produce more than any other society on earth—consume more, as well.
There’s nothing Boehner and these other mealy-mouthed Republicans can ever do to prevent Obama and his probable successors from remaining really, really mad about all kinds of things they cannot change, and that nobody rational would want to change—the remnants of material prosperity and individual freedoms still with us. What advocates of Nanny statism and socialism are really angry at is reality. They take this out on Republicans, but Republicans don’t represent reality (or much of anything at all); they’re simply a convenient punching bag.
Impeachment would simply be a way of holding Obama accountable for his actions—not primarily his policies, but his blatant evasion of Constitutional requirements about executing the laws of the land, requirements he swore twice to uphold.
Of course, impeachment should be paired with a positive program based on entirely opposite principles of government from those Obama advocates. Proposals for massively cutting government spending should include such things as significant tax reductions across the board, eliminating entire government agencies and even entire Cabinet departments (starting with Education), and privatizing and deregulating schools and health care as widely and swiftly as possible.
Republicans such as Karl Rove and John Boehner are quick to say, “You can’t do that. We’ll lose!” If standing up for something fundamentally different from what we know isn’t the purpose of an opposition party—then what exactly is?
No, of course these things won’t pass. But an opposing party is supposed to offer policies based on opposing principles. Even when defeat is certain, it’s at least an opportunity to permit debate on subjects very important to the cause of human survival. Americans must be educated in accepting rational principles of government, including economic freedom, and many are still open to alternatives to the socialist-fascist mixture conveniently known as “progressivism.”
Obama came to office promising “change,” without ever identifying what he meant. Now we know, via his remarkably consistent actions. By “change” he meant more government spending, more government bankruptcy, more government control over the private sector and the individual lives of the American people.
We also now see he meant establishing new precedents whereby the President can declare law to be whatever he wishes it to be—a key principle of any cheap dictatorship. Obama has made it easier not just for future Democratic presidents to more completely nationalize wealth and strangle the private sector (via executive fiat); he has also made it easier for some future conservative Republican president to impose controls on abortion, contraception, same-sex unions or secular websites and publications without necessarily having the benefit of law. Is this what liberals really wanted?
No, Obama has not established a dictatorship. That will come gradually to America, if it comes at all. We are walking towards a dictatorship, not sprinting. But to leave a President who so blatantly defies his Constitutional limitations unchallenged is a dangerous precedent that will haunt us for a long time to come. Collectively, Americans—with the help of the Great Enablers, the Republicans—have told this particular President, “Go ahead. Do what you want, even if it violates the Constitution.” Nixon was forced to resign, and Bill Clinton was impeached, for far lesser crimes.
If this trend continues, and we eventually move into things like censorship and total nationalization of private industry, don’t simply blame the Obamas of the world. Blame the spineless and unprincipled John Boehners, as well. They’ve given sad new relevance to the old phrase, “Better Red than dead.” The real movers and shakers of history never became that way by avoiding the “disruption” of strong adherence to life-serving principles.
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