I’d like to get Dopers’ opinions on Biden’s surge of executive orders, particularly on environmental issues. Here’s a good summary:
I agree with at least 95% of the positions these EOs address, so I’m not looking for a debate on them. But I’m concerned that they might be issues better addressed through legislation.
Yes, EOs prompt faster action. But they also get hung up with legal challenges, and they fuel the “divisive” narrative that can hurt Biden with moderates in both parties.
Unlike fighting COVID, environmental issues are long-term. While they’re very important, a few weeks’ or months’ delay wouldn’t be crippling. With (admittedly razor-slim) majorities in both houses of Congress, why wouldn’t Biden work with reps and senators to introduce legislation that could be debated, negotiated and ultimately passed? Wasn’t that supposed to be one of his strengths?
Without a Senate supermajority (like Ds used for the ACA) or Senate rule changes that get around the filibuster (like the Rs did for the 2017 Tax cuts) big legislation like that needed to address a politically divisive issue like climate change is impossible.
I’m not sure how the executive branch in the US works, but to me some of this looks like administration policy statements. For instance this:
The order directs the secretary of the Interior Department to pause “to the extent possible” new oil and gas leasing activity on federal lands and offshore waters. It also kicks off a “rigorous review of all existing leasing and permitting practices related to fossil fuel development on public lands and waters,” according to the administration.
Is that not something the Biden administration could do simply by being in charge of the Department of the Interior?
And if they can’t just do that, is it because of existing legislation, or because of Trump EOs, or because that’s just not how it works.
To me, as a confused observer, it looks like the flurry of EOs is mainly reversing Trump EOs, with the addition some EOs that make policy statements more visible. And I think any honest discussion about the number of EOs should start by subtracting the ones that “merely” reverse a Trump EO.
The bulk of the executive orders appear to be undoing executive orders of the previous administration or giving direction to federal agencies to do perform their designated responsibilities in a way consistent with the Biden-Harris administration policy. Since executive orders are directives to departments of the Executive branch, Congress cannot directly revoke them; they can only defund or supersede them (e.g. the famous Boland Amendments outlawing U.S. assistance to the Contras for the purpose of overthrowing the Nicaraguan government that featured heavily in the Iran-Contra Affair) or challenge them in federal courts.
Aside from that, Biden is issuing executive orders in absence of Congressional action. The Congress, and particularly the Senate, have been largely deadlocked and moribund in the last couple of decades even when a party has a clear majority in both houses and holds the executive, so complaints about “executive overreach” can and should be countered with, “Do your fucking job, Mitch!” Even with the slim majority Democrats have now, the existence and continued abuse of the Senate filibuster threatens to negate any intent on taking the necessary action to deal with the major crises facing the nation (pandemic, civil unrest, racial and gender inequalities, effects of severe weather stemming from climate change, failing infrastructure, inadequate educational opportunities and college debt, spiraling medical costs, aging population and workforce, unemployment, lack of coherent policy on immigration, market deregulation leading to manipulation of the economy by large hedge funds and investment banks, et cetera.)
So Biden can either sit on his hands and wait for some brave Republican to cold-cock Mitch McConnell and his fellow obstructionists and lead the party down a path of making reasonable compromises while pursuing their ideals in governance, or Biden can issue executive orders and at least get government agencies creaking along on addressing these issues and hopefully generating enough momentum that the electorate demands legislative action. I’d much rather that Congress got to work on their backlog of legislative issues and addressing these problems by passing bills that are encoded in the Code of Federal Regulations, but I’d also like a pet triceratops and an interplanetary space yacht but I’m not waiting around for Jeff Bezos to deliver them to my front door.
Leasing extraction rights of public resources is a substantial legal process, if the leasing process has passed to where various agreements have been singed with private companies, it may not be legal to stop them now (this may just be a semantic quibble on what “new” means).
Some of parts of EOs do end up sounding a lot like policy statements, but don’t underestimate the power of presidential policy statements (even aspirational ones) to direct department-internal decisions on funding and staff effort.
I get that it’s important to reverse Trump’s EOs, and I also understand the difficulty (maybe impossibility) of enacting legislation to address these issues. But some of these EOs come close in my view to little more than virtue signalling.
For instance, the order for "federal agencies to ‘eliminate fossil fuel subsidies’ and ‘identify new opportunities to spur innovation, commercialization, and deployment of clean technologies and infrastructure.’”
Those subsidies and tax breaks have to be enacted by Congress, right? Why not eliminate them through Congress? Let’s have congressional debates on why an industry that makes billions in profits every year needs $40 billion in federal subsidies. Let’s hear reps and senators defend them, while other reps and senators make the case for directing those subsidies toward higher growth sectors that don’t contribute to climate change (or even for no subsidies at all).
But the EO just says “oil subsidies bad” without really doing anything to eliminate them.
The Republicans have essentially broken the legislative process by way of obstruction while in the minority and then using a combination of executive orders and fast tracking legislation (i.e. doing away with filibusters when it suits them) when in the majority.
Biden has to act now, or face being a failed president, and liberal democracy is not in a position to afford failure. If Biden fails, the entire system my fail with him. He has not just the prerogative but a duty to use every last bit of his legitimate powers in order to succeed.
And maybe Lucy will finally allow Charlie Brown to kick the football this time.
All it will take is one Democratic Senator from a state with a Republican governor who can appoint a replacement to die and the Democrats will lose their majority. I think it’s urgent for Biden to try to do as much as he can unilaterally. Bipartisanship has been a dead letter for years. I have zero expectation that Republicans will do anything but obstruct merely because it’s a Democratic initiative, regardless of whether it benefits the country or not.
He shouldn’t be concerned with trying to fix a procedural problem that Republicans have single-handedly created. Biden has inherited multiple crisis that, if not fixed, could result in an even worse political crisis than what we’ve already seen. This is what FDR understood in January of 1933 – his first priority is to be effective, not political “fair.”
I doubt it; the GOP has become used to governing as a political minority. By that I mean that despite the fact that Democratic and center-left policies have largely been more popular over the last decade, and despite the fact the Democrats have actually received more votes in presidential and congressional elections, the Republicans have political power that is considerably out of proportion given their lack of popularity, and that’s because they’ve learned how to rig the system. Democrats try to play fair and they end up being battered spouses. It’s time to stop being victims and to take control of the situation – they have to get things done for the American people.
I personally don’t like how much power that the Executive branch, and I would have to acknowledge that both parties contributed to strengthening that branch of government over the decades. But Democrats arguably did so with better intentions and with the idea of respecting the limits of executive power – Republicans made it clear under Trump that they have no regard whatsoever for such limits, and things were kinda heading in that direction already under Bush/Cheney.
(bolding mine)
Again, I can’t disagree with anything you’ve said, but as far as getting things done … these environmental EOs make me happy, they make you happy, they please a lot of people, but I fear they won’t bring about significant change for a long time, if ever. They won’t move the needle for anyone who isn’t already squarely in Biden’s camp.
Considering that we’ve been going full speed in reverse for the past four years, that’s enough for me for now.
On the off chance the Republican Party implodes, it may be possible to get more done in the future. But as is said, politics is the art of the possible. We need to take what we can get while the getting is good.
If decisive action doesn’t move the needle right away, then it doesn’t move the needle - so be it, I guess. It needs to be done, regardless of whether it convinces anyone who believes otherwise. It’s one of many decisive and bold actions that has to be taken.
I’ve said it repeatedly since the assault on the Capitol: as much as I agree with those who would like to see Trump successfully impeached for inciting unrest, what matters even more than that, and what matters more than anything right now is that Biden be viewed as a successful president. It’s a trite phrase, but failure really isn’t an option at this point. Biden has to be regarded as an effective leader. He has no time to waste. People are counting on him to deliver results, and perhaps unilaterally, whether they even realize it or not. If he fails, I think that liberal democracy in America (the kind of inclusive democratic system we’re used to) will collapse. We might still have a democracy of some kind but it will probably be a rigged, illiberal version of it, similar to what we see in the former pro-Soviet Eastern bloc nations.
Biden has frequently made the point that he intends to work with members of both parties in Congress to enact his programs and fix the various long standing and systemic problems, and White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki invariably invokes this intent whenever the question comes up. (I’ve never been one for watching White House pressers because they usually contain little to no useful information and pretty much are just a propaganda tool in and of themselves, but after four years of utter incompetence and needless adversary from that office in dealing with the press, just watching someone do the job well and fielding the often ignorant or barbed questions with patience and grace is calming in and of itself.) But invoking and complaining about GOP obstruction and fifty cents will get you a cheap cup of coffee.
The “GOP has truly flaunted its disdain for democracy” is not a negative for a large number of Republican voters who clearly don’t give a good whore’s fuck for democracy if it means that they would have to compromise in anyway, and especially Trump supporters who by and large are just fine with insurrectionists almost literally pulling the temple down upon their heads. Over 73 million people voted for Trump, and in general Republican candidates in Congress did better than projections indicated.
Mitch McConnell is already up to his usual obstructionist tactics and has managed to recruit Democrats Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema into agreeing to not vote for restricting or abolishing the filibuster, virtually guaranteeing that nothing will get through the Senate unless McConnell gets a nice juicy payoff for it, and he’s basically going to play the game of waiting for the mid-term elections when the Democrats have a better than even chance of losing their already perilous 48Dem + 2 Ind + VP voting majority.
For Biden, doing something right now via executive order is key to both getting the various crises under control and showing strong leadership vice waiting for McConnell and the GOP—many of whom didn’t even recognize the legitimacy of his election until right before the January 6 Electoral College vote certification—to come to the table. It is unfortunate that Congress and in particular the GOP can’t get over itself and get down to doing the hard work of actually addressing these issues in some way that would be acceptable to the majority of Americans, but then, they didn’t become the Party of Obstruction overnight. Newt Gingrich and Co. have been cultivating this way of doing business for a quarter of a century, and we now have a generation of Republican congresspeople who think that this is just how the legislature “works”.
Like this:
This is what we’re dealing with; Congresspeople who can’t even be arsed to show up for a hearing about funding an existing act to provide for 9/11 first responders and can only be forced into doing their jobs by being hounded by a comedian with zero fucks left to give about dignity and decorum.
Again, I 100% agree – and I’m hoping he delivers big-time on vaccine distribution to chalk up a big early win.
What troubles me is the slow-moving impacts of these environmental EOs. For instance, the freeze on new oil and gas leases. The HuffPo article says:
Experts say the move is unlikely to severely impact the oil and gas sector, which maintains drilling rights on more than 20 million federal acres not yet in production and stockpiled hundreds of federal leases and permits in the waning days of Trump’s tenure.
So even if all new leases stopped immediately, we wouldn’t see any less drilling or fracking for several years, and fossil fuels’ hold on our energy infrastructure will take even longer to weaken. This EO, in other words, doesn’t deliver any immediate results beyond purely symbolic ones – so why not go at it through legislation?
Even if the intent is to do nothing more than energize the hell out of his political base, that has pragmatic political value – he builds political capital, which is what he needs now. I see no downside. Again, I wish it were different, but we’re not in a normal relationship with anti-democratic republican legislators; we’re trying to recover from the extreme damage they’ve done. It’s not unreasonable to reject their calls for ‘unity’ and ‘respect for political consensus’.
I think there are limits. Biden can’t just EO his way through his presidency and he knows that. But where it’s possible, this is a way to rack up win with his supporters and to convince some of his progressive skeptics that they needn’t regret their vote. He’s done nothing so far that should upset middle of the road voters - at least not yet.
I get it. I remain (perhaps naively) hopeful that a not-insignificant number of center-ish voters can be swayed to support center-left initiatives and candidates if they can be demonstrated to make a positive impact – especially when the alternative is guys in Viking horns trying to assassinate lawmakers in the US Capitol.
They could if a responsible adult were to take over leadership of the GOP and lead it back to a more center-right path of fiscal and social pragmatism. A Republican party led by, say, John McCain wouldn’t be doing this nonsense, and wouldn’t have allowed itself to be successively hijacked by neocons, Tea Partiers, and now a collection of white nationalists, fascists, and oligharical partisans; it would look more like Eisenhower’s Republic party, which while far from perfect was at least devoted to make government work and provide service to the public as a whole. As it stands, the current GOP is sitting around a bucket of gasoline and flipping lit matches at it.
I think this is the crux of the problem. Whereas the party of Bush and McCain used to cynically reach out to disaffected white voters to put them over the finish line, the right wing political activists have created a party apparatus that now makes them dependent on extreme activism in order to raise money. In a growing number of states, the Republican party has become the Trump/QAnon modern-day brown shirt party. The Republican party began pushing moderates out of the party in the 2000s over immigration and other issues, and losing twice to Barack Obama drove them over the edge. They’ve driven the crazy clown car over the cliff. There is no going back now. It will take crashing and burning to change things.
What Biden has to do is to avoid getting dragged over the cliff with them. Don’t reach out that hand of bipartisanship, Joe. Just don’t do it. They’ll take you and the rest of us for a ride.
