The president's precident
AKA "The Fix"
So in the lead up to the shutdown President Obama was telling his critics that the ACA was “settled” and “here to stay”. But in a effort to stave off growing backlash, and the threat of house Democrats siding with Republicans on the Keep Your Health Plan Act, the President is announcing that he will delay enforcement of the act's policy requirements and employer mandate until after the 2014 election cycle. (May 2015)
So in a seriously surreal moment Tea-partiers and the GOP establishment find themselves nodding in a agreement with Howard Dean...
So does the president have the authority to "fix" a problematic law? The short answer is no, he doesn't. If the President doesn't even get a line-item veto. He certainly doesn't get to rewrite or amend a statute without sending it back to congress.
Now I understand the desire to do "whatever it takes" to salvage the President's signature achievement but it sets a dangerous precedent. Would Obama, and his party as whole, be similarly supportive of a hypothetical pro-life president's attempts to unilaterally "fix" abortion law, or a libertarian president "fixing" the federal tax code? Personally I suspect that the vast majority of Democrats would be up in arms, and that calls for impeachment would on the speaker's desk before lunch.
And yet here we are...
Personally I find these developments deeply troubling.
I've been told that I put too much stock in "dead white slave-holders", but I still believe that the chief thing that stands between the US and a neo-soviet or fascist style police state is not the fact that we get to elect a new set of Ivy-League overlords every 4-8 years but the fact that there are, in theory at least, rules and standards that even our Ivy-League overlords must adhere to. "a government," as John Adams used to say "of laws not of men".
Only time will tell what sort of effect Obama's presidency will have on "rule of law" but unless there is some serious push-back and soon I don't see it being a good one.
I would hope that those who criticized Bush for his "Imperial Presidency" would see this as well.
So in the lead up to the shutdown President Obama was telling his critics that the ACA was “settled” and “here to stay”. But in a effort to stave off growing backlash, and the threat of house Democrats siding with Republicans on the Keep Your Health Plan Act, the President is announcing that he will delay enforcement of the act's policy requirements and employer mandate until after the 2014 election cycle. (May 2015)
So in a seriously surreal moment Tea-partiers and the GOP establishment find themselves nodding in a agreement with Howard Dean...
Click to viewSo does the president have the authority to "fix" a problematic law? The short answer is no, he doesn't. If the President doesn't even get a line-item veto. He certainly doesn't get to rewrite or amend a statute without sending it back to congress.
Now I understand the desire to do "whatever it takes" to salvage the President's signature achievement but it sets a dangerous precedent. Would Obama, and his party as whole, be similarly supportive of a hypothetical pro-life president's attempts to unilaterally "fix" abortion law, or a libertarian president "fixing" the federal tax code? Personally I suspect that the vast majority of Democrats would be up in arms, and that calls for impeachment would on the speaker's desk before lunch.
And yet here we are...
Personally I find these developments deeply troubling.
I've been told that I put too much stock in "dead white slave-holders", but I still believe that the chief thing that stands between the US and a neo-soviet or fascist style police state is not the fact that we get to elect a new set of Ivy-League overlords every 4-8 years but the fact that there are, in theory at least, rules and standards that even our Ivy-League overlords must adhere to. "a government," as John Adams used to say "of laws not of men".
Only time will tell what sort of effect Obama's presidency will have on "rule of law" but unless there is some serious push-back and soon I don't see it being a good one.
I would hope that those who criticized Bush for his "Imperial Presidency" would see this as well.