What spleen? The thread title is a play on the linked article’s comparison between Obama’s actions and Lincoln’s actions when assuming a power that the text of the law does not give them, and on the famous debate when Lloyd Bentsen told Dan Quayle he was no Jack Kennedy. As the linked article makes clear, Obama’s response to exceeding the authority the text of the law offered him is quite different from Lincoln’s.
I am generally a fan of the unitary executive. I have no particular problem with Obama’s actions – but it’s fair to describe those actions as violating the law as written.
What I am interested in this debate is exploring how others, especially those who in the past have not been supportive of a unitary executive, approach this.
In my opinion, we cannot say, “The President has the power to do X,” only when we agree that X is for a good cause. And the responses to my OP have suggested that this is indeed the yardstick that is being used.
I would like, your answer to 2016, though. Scalia’s point is mine: the Executive deserves deference. If the Executive in 2017 is a Republican and he takes the same action, and his Treasury secretary and HHS secretary agree with him, are those same actions that Obama took still within the powers of the President?
(A) Yes
(B) No
(C) No only if the courts and/or Congress take action to say “no”
(D) the powers of a Democratic president differ from the powers of a Republican president
I’m getting behind the answer that is telling all that you are dropping any pretense of the OP that what the President did was “not in good faith”.
And still in all your replies of today there is no effort whatsoever to deal with how or why the president has to be accused of breaking the law. Once again it is possible thanks to the lousy opinion writers of the right by giving a very incomplete picture to many on the right.
The reasons for the delay were explained by the treasury department, that item is still there, it is not going away, tap dancing with accusations with no support is not helping anyone, exept for many realizing that once again the right wing bubble of information is doing a number once again on a few posters.
The accusations do not touch that very key important issue of showing even a hint that what Treasury and others reported on the justifications for the delay, and one key fact is that they reported on the request of private industry and others to delay so as to make the ACA law work as intended. So, once again, it leads many to not give importance to the howls of the right until they explain properly why that request was improper or “unjustified”.
Back to the question of intent, does the President have the power to use the armed forces to attack another country, without congressional authorization, if the President believes that the country is planning an imminent attack on the US? I’m pretty sure the answer to that would be a unanimous yes.
Does the President have the power to attack a country without congressional authorization if he believes that the country is not a threat to the US? I can’t think of anyone who would believe such a thing.
So, it seems that the President’s powers do have some relation to his intent to use them.
And Bricker, your silly leading list of answers there is also incomplete, the answer does depend on finding if the justifications put forward by the president and the government groups are in good faith or not.
And here I do question your good faith, this is a misrepresentation of what I’m saying. One has to find first if the reasons for a delay on enforcing a law are justified or not.
What do I care what people believe? According to “Family Feud,” people believe “Name a county beginning with the letter ‘A,’” is properly answered “Africa.” The question is what statutory or Constitutional language supports your claim.
So no, a reading of Congress’ limitations on the President’s power doesn’t mention that theory at all:
Of course the Constitution doesn’t contain that limitation. So every single president has rejected that language.
I have no idea where you are getting the standard you propose. Where is it?
Or is the scope of the President’s power determined by an American Idol-style poll? Ryan Seacrest could announce the result: “George Bush: you wanted to invade Iraq, but America says… We’ll tell you after the break!”
Nonsense, the problem with Iraq is that while many did though the invasion was bananas, hard evidence for that was only found after the fact. What I think **Ravenman **is mentioning is if we encounter a case when the President clearly is attempting to do a very stupid or crazy thing, as soon as many organizations and people in the chain of command report that something is amiss the action against a president would be swift.
I notice your extreme reluctance to actually define any presidential power.
Does the president have any powers at all?
I mean that every time I try to define some permanent principle, you tell me it’s not really permanent. Is it incorrect to make the claim that the President has powers, period? It seems to me that any power he has is subject to the same limitation you mention: that some other entity might act to stop it.
The one is many. As usual there are leads of the government organizations that raised the concern early, over them there are committees that oversee those leads and government organizations, gross and bad faith acts can be identified there. And indeed this movie of pumped up accusations from the right is just predictable from there.
No matter how justified a change is reported that is needed, some member of those committees will complain and launch investigations, no problem with that.
The point to me is that if it was as serious as the WSJ sorry piece tries to make it, then very swift action would had be seen to take this quickly to congress and the courts, with so many rabid tea party people in the mix it would not be surprising, but in the end the congress critters have to confront their constituents and judges have to see if the complaint is not stupid, in the end a very good reason is still needed, not just a lousy opinion from a conservative paper.
I have to say this point is really lame and an attempt at clouding the issue, the context is clear, unilateral actions from a president deserve the highest form of scrutiny and could lead to the removal of the president. Nixon found out that the president needs proper justification for his or her actions and when the acts of a president are clearly improper even the president’s own party will oppose him/her.
This ACA action we are talking was not just a decision made up by the President.
It seems abundantly clear that the President may take action in self-defense of the country – even before the first blow is landed – to insure that the Constitution is “not self-destructive.” I do not know anyone who would contend that such a power extends to a President attacking other countries if the President simply felt it fun, rather than necessary to the country’s self-defense.
It should be patently obvious that the President’s motivation for attacking another country without the approval of Congress is a power that depends on why the President thinks the use of the Armed Forces is necessary. If you can muster a serious response to why this is not the case, in your view, I’m all ears.
Otherwise, it would seem that you are saying that a future President would be as prohibited from striking first against a surprise foreign invasion force headed straight for our border, as would a President who might seek to invade Canada in order to carry out a genocidal rampage; simply because it’s only their actions, not their intent or any circumstances of the facts, that count.
This seems only vaguely tied to the unitary executive question, which is primarily tied to the power of congress to create independent regulatory agencies outside of direct Presidential control and empower subordinate positions in the executive agencies with independent decision making power (like the 2008 example where the President instructed the EPA to allow higher ozone standards than EPA officials had recommended).
How is this a unitary executive question? Is it because it’s a question of Congress mandating when a program starts?
FWIW, this article provides a legal counterpoint to the argument advanced in the WSJ op-ed:
The relevant passage is below, which incidentally makes clear why Obama’s one-year delay for practical reasons is different from a hypothetical Republican president refusing to implement the law indefinitely on account of a policy stance.
"In fact, applicable judicial precedent places such timing adjustments well within the Executive Branch’s lawful discretion. To be sure, the federal Administrative Procedure Act authorizes federal courts to compel agencies to initiate statutorily required actions that have been “unreasonably delayed.” But courts have found delays to be unreasonable only in rare cases where, unlike this one, inaction had lasted for several years, and the recalcitrant agency could offer neither a persuasive excuse nor a credible end to its dithering. In deciding whether a given agency delay is reasonable, current law tells courts to consider whether expedited action could adversely affect “higher or competing” agency priorities, and whether other interests could be “prejudiced by the delay.” Even in cases where an agency outright refuses to enforce a policy in specified types of cases – not the case here – the Supreme Court has declined to intervene. As held by former Chief Justice William Rehnquist in a leading case on this subject, Heckler v. Chaney, courts must respect an agency’s presumptively superior grasp of “the many variables involved in the proper ordering of its priorities.” Chief Justice Rehnquist suggested that courts could lose their deference to Executive Branch judgment if an “agency has consciously and expressly adopted a general policy that is so extreme as to amount to an abdication of its statutory responsibilities.” The Obama Administration has not and is not about to abdicate its responsibility to implement the statute on whose success his historical legacy will most centrally depend.
Nor is the one-year delay of the employer mandate an affront to the Constitution, as Professor Michael McConnell and Congressional Republicans insist. The relevant text requires that the President “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Scholars on both left and right concur that this broadly-worded phrasing indicates that the President is to exercise judgment, and handle his enforcement duties with fidelity to all laws, including, indeed, the Constitution. As McConnell himself notes, both Republican and Democratic Justice Departments have consistently opined that the clause authorizes a president even to decline enforcement of a statute altogether, if in good faith he determines it to be in violation of the Constitution. But, McConnell contends, a president cannot “refuse to enforce a statute he opposes for policy reasons.” While surely correct, that contention is beside the point."
It also seems to me self-evident that the bar for justifying the suspension of habeas corpus ought to be quite a bit higher than for something as banal (by comparison) as the current subject. So Lincoln went to greater lengths to justify what he did. What’s Rosenkranz’s point in bringing Lincoln into this, other than scoring a cheap shot (“you, sir, are no Abe Lincoln”)?
Can somebody just agree with Bricker so we can move on the next phase of his oh-so-diabolical philosophical trap that ends with all of us being forced to admit we secretly voted for Romney?
Well, those of us who are American, anyway. The rest of us secretly voted to invite an American invasion to overthrow our governments and impose American-style democracy.
Interestingly–I didn’t realize this until running a quick Google search just now–Romney is actually on the record saying that on Day 1, he would direct the secretary of health and human services to grant an Obamacare waiver to all 50 states. Obviously, Charles Krauthammer, the WSJ journal, and everyone else raising hell about Obama’s lawlessness was silent on whether this would exceed his presidential authority.
depending on the “findings” of a very silly opinion piece from the WSJ is not the way to go forward.