TruthTest #2-Reports Due Sept. 22, Filming Sept. 24, and Segment Airing September 25

Transcription

1 TruthTest #2-Reports Due Sept. 22, Filming Sept. 24, and Segment Airing September 25 Statement: President Obama is abusing Executive Orders and Executive Actions. David Perdue- Our Founders created a system of checks and balances to prevent any one branch of government from becoming too powerful. Today, that system is under attack as President Obama continues to circumvent Congress and use executive overreach to pursue his imperial presidency. Speaker John Boehner: But too often over the past five years, the President has circumvented the American people and their elected representatives through executive action, changing and creating his own laws, and excusing himself from enforcing statutes he is sworn to uphold -- at times even boasting about his willingness to do it, as if daring the American people to stop him. Representative Graves: Congress must act to defend the Constitution when a president rewrites and selectively enforces the law, said Rep. Graves. If successful, the legal action authorized by the House today would stop the executive overreach and reverse President Obama s unconstitutional actions. Bringing an end to President Obama s imperial lawmaking spree would restore Americans confidence in our system of government and do much to protect our liberty, now and in the future. KSU TruthTest Report Article I of the United States Constitution clearly places the legislative branch in the policymaking driver s seat. But Article II of the Constitution, combined with gradual but expansive growth in the size of government and the authority of executive officers, has resulted in a system where Presidents in the U.S. system have a great deal of latitude and authority when implementing policy. In July, the U.S. House of Representatives sued President Obama, claiming that he had usurped their policymaking authority and failed to faithfully execute the laws of the United States. His critics have argued that Obama has abused and exceeded the authorities of his office, especially through his use of executive orders and other actions. These critics point to a few central cases of alleged abuse, including the use of executive orders to inhibit greenhouse gas emissions and enhance gun control regulations, delaying implementation of the Affordable Care Act, raising the minimum wage for federal workers, expanding the rights of gays and lesbians in the federal workforce, and failing to deport undocumented minors. There are several ways to measure the use of executive authority. The first is the number of executive orders. Though it only measures the frequency, and not the degree, of executive action, it is a useful way to compare President Obama to other Presidents. It is clear from Figure 1 that Obama is the least active President (by this measure) in over 1 years. President Obama has thus far averaged less than 35 executive orders per year a low number not seen since the days of Grover Cleveland. This continues a trend that began in the Eisenhower years, and includes many of Obama s predecessors, who have returned to a less active executive order agenda. However, as Figure 2 shows, even amongst these relatively restrained recent Presidents (Reagan onward) Obama has been the least active. We explored two other methods of quantifying Obama s use of executive authority. The first is the use of recess appointments, a method appointing one s preferred administrator or

2 judge to federal positions without securing Congressional approval. We discuss a major blemish on Obama s record in this regard below, but in spite of that blow, Figure 3 reveals that compared to recent presidents (who are collectively quite a bit higher than the historic record) President Obama has been numerically restrained in his use of recess appointments, with fewer than seven per year, compared to over 29 for Reagan, 42 for George H.W. Bush, and 17 for Bill Clinton, all of whom dealt with a Congress dominated by the opposition party, like Obama. Even George W. Bush, who had a Republican Congress for six of his years in office, had more recess appointments (nearly 1 per year) than President Obama. The use of vetoes, though clearly Constitutional, is another measure one could use to explore the authoritarian tendencies of chief executives. Our TruthTest Team found that again, President Obama LESS willing to use his veto authority than other modern Presidents, vetoing less than one percent of bills sent to his desk, as opposed to the 8-1% vetoed by Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton. Clearly, when it comes to the numbers, President Obama is no Executive bully. However, critics of President Obama argue that the measure of a President s lawlessness in not necessarily in the quantity of his or her executive actions, but in their quality (or lack thereof) and degree of intervention into Congress legitimate sphere of authority. These measures, of course, are less specific. One specific criticism of President Obama s skeptics does ring true his recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. This action joins only a handful of others in American history in that distinction. So President Obama is not blameless. An exploration of recent history, however, suggests that President Obama and his opponents in Congress are hardly unique. Below is just a sampling of executive actions deemed excessive by political opponents at the time: President Dwight Eisenhower orders desegregation of Little Rock Central High School, sending troops to enforce court orders o Governor George Bell Timmerman Jr. says Eisenhower s intervention reveals a dictatorship and the communization of the country. President Ronald Reagan fires 11, air traffic controllers, who are on strike. o John Conyers, Democratic Representative from Michigan says Reagan s response is without parallel in U.S history. President Ronald Reagan expands U.S. assistance to Nicaraguan resistance, helping exiles flee to United States (which was questionably legal under U.S. law) President Ronald Reagan, in direct contradiction of U.S. law, negotiates arms sales to Iran, using proceeds to fund Nicaraguan rebel fighters o Democrats accuse Reagan of shredding the Constitution President George H.W. Bush bans the foreign-made semi-automatic assault weapons following a school shooting in Stockton, California President Bill Clinton requires executive agencies to withhold federal contracts from companies who are replacing striking workers President Bill Clinton bans semi-automatic weapons after a school shooting that killed five children o Rep. Butch Otter says ban provided illusion of reducing gun violence, but did real damage to our liberties.

3 President Bill Clinton orders federal agencies to plan enforcement mechanisms of United Nations Human Rights treaties, including some which the Senate has not yet ratified President George W. Bush bans virtually all federal funding for embryonic stem cell research projects President George W. Bush signs secret order allowing domestic spying within the United States. It is clear that Presidents in modern times have asserted their authority in a wide variety of ways not explicitly outlined in the Constitution. President Obama s crimes, like those of his predecessors, appear to be political rather than civil. Critics of President Obama, like most critics of Presidential executive actions, appear to be motivated by opposition to the policy agenda of the President, rather than some Constitutional objection to executive authority more generally. The irony, in fact, is that both President Obama and his critics are behaving in ways they criticized during the Bush administration. As a candidate, President Obama promised to reverse President Bush s habit of circumventing Congress on important issues, and Republican leaders now suing the President defended Bush s executive actions as essential to fighting the war on terror and responding to the financial crisis of 27. The objective measures of President Obama s executive actions reveal Perdue s and other critics arguments as mostly without merit. In addition to the lowest rate of executive orders, vetoes, and recess appointments, President Obama s executive actions, with one notable exception (NLRB appointments), are in many ways consistent with other Presidents actions. Another common denominator is the opposition of those who do not support the specific policies themselves. Current critics of President Obama, like many of those of Bush, Reagan, Carter and perhaps even George Washington, confuse their judgment of unwise with abusive, and for that we give this statement a D+. TruthTest Grade D+

4 Figure 1 35 Executive Orders (per year) Figure 2 6 Executive Orders (per year) Reagan H.W. Bush Clinton W. Bush Obama

5 Figure Recess Appointments (per year) Reagan H.W. Bush Clinton W. Bush Obama Figure 4 12 Bills Vetoed (% of Total Passed) Reagan H. W. Bush Clinton W. Bush Obama