It is. THe very first act a President does is take an oath to faithfully execute the law. Since there is more law than a President can faithfully execute(a problem that needs to be corrected by making less law), the President has wide latitude to exercise discretion. He may prioritize laws based on the resources given to him and use prosecutorial discretion to only go after people who are truly a threat to society.
However, in some cases, he has specific resources in specific areas that are more than adequate to go after more than just the really bad cases. Immigration is one of those. While he doesn’t have enough resources to deport everyone, he does have enough to deport 12 million or so over eight years(that’s how many Clinton deported), which means that he can deport a lot more than just felons and repeat illegal entries. He can of course prioritize those cases, and he has, but he also has to continue deportation of people whose only offense is being here illegally(well, if they are working they actually have committed a couple of felonies, but we don’t like to talk about that, it’s not PC).
If he was to declare that he was no longer deporting people except felons, then he would be refusing to enforce the law, and that would be an impeachable offense.
Delaying the business mandate in the health care law was patently illegal. The law gives him no such discretion. He did it because it’s an inconvenient law. Same goes for the individual mandate. Although he’s using all kinds of clever legal tricks to avoid crossing the line: the business mandate is in effect(for some businesses) and the individual mandate is in effect(for some individuals). But in neither case is it lack of resources or prosecutorial discretion. It’s political convenience. He may not be in violation of the letter of the law, but he’s certainly violating the spirit of it for political gain.
Sorry adaher, but this is Fox News nonsense. Even if it made sense to compare absolute numbers between administrations (which of course ignores things like the effects of a recession or a refugee crisis on immigration and changes in immigration law), those numbers don’t bear out the case that Obama has cut back on the total number of “deportations.”
I think you are confusing an illegal act with, arguably, and impeachable act. Your insistence to tying impeachment to an actual crime is going to hamstring you if you want to impeach for not enforcing laws as you (or others) might see fit. In order to commit a crime, you have to break a law. What law is Obama breaking in this case? Hint: He is not breaking the ACA.
Truth be told, I’m not sure it’s possible to be an effective president without skating that line, simply because the demands of the job (perhaps more accurately, the demands of congress coupled with the limitations imposed by congress) require it. I suppose a president who was careful to do everything in such a way that congress couldn’t possibly grumble would too meek and ineffectual.
The other aspect of this is just the psychology of partisanship. The other guy rides rough over the laws and is a tyrant, while your guy is too meek and refuses to exercise his power fully. So it was under Bush. So it is now. And so it will be for whatever Republican is elected after Hillary.
That’s not to say neither Obama or Bush have actually expanded power or wielded it in some new way. But that’s not what’s really driving the public sentiment. Exhibit A is that Republicans don’t give two shits about Obama’s actual biggest expansion (or continued expansion) of executive power, which has been in the context of surveillance and drones.
Republicans need to do two things simultaneously. First, they need to express outrage over Obama’s supposed impeachable offenses. Every executive order is worthy of apoplexy. They must keep their base in a constant state of fear, hatred, and outrage. But at the same time, they must not actually proceed with impeachment proceedings. Even though they have the votes to impeach, they certainly don’t have the votes to convict in the Senate and if they actually voted to impeach, they would alienate a lot more people than they would win over. So the constant drumbeat of Obama’s “lawlessness” will continue throughout the remainder of his term but there will be no effort made to impeach.
The president, in exercising or not exercising his duties, can’t break the law unless he… actually breaks a law. For example, Congress would have to pass a law saying that it was illegal for the president to delay the individual mandate in order for it to be illegal for him to delay the individual mandate.
Just “enforcing the law incorrectly” isn’t, per se, illegal. Of course, then you have to address the issue of arresting the president. So, better to stick to impeachment rather than insist on law breaking.
We can argue about the numbers, but that’s not really the point here. The point is that he was right when he said he can’t end deportations on his own. If he did, he would be blatantly refusing to enforce the law.
And I wish you and congress the best of luck when you decide to stop yakking about it and try to actually do something about it. It’ll be a big waste of time, end with an acquittal and reduce congress’s approval rating still further, so have at it.
True, since impeachment would come down to politics rather than the facts. So a better approach, as I mentioned, would be defunding something the President actually yearns to enforce better in retaliation for his refusal to enforce something Congress wants enforced.
He seems pretty committed to that health care law. If the Republicans win the Senate, defund the IRS’s ability to enforce ACA against individual Americans. See who the public sides with on that fight.
Actually, the way the public sees the IRS right now, they could probably defang it completely for a few years. Make them fire some people for lack of funds.
Wouldn’t ruin the country anymore than defunding the INS would ruin the country. Which refusing to use it is effectively doing. You know, without the benefit of the taxpayers actually saving money in the process, since the INS will find something to do with the money if they aren’t deporting as many people. Probably build an awesome new HQ with all sorts of amenities, hire some more clerical workers and middle managers.
This is a perfectly cromulent theory knowing what we knew in 1789 about political science. But of course we now know that our system of electoral politics is pretty bad a judging the winners of particular policy fights like that. Instead, the President will take a small hit for the harm Congress caused by the de-funding, and the Congressional re-election will turn on the usual non-policy factors, like the state of the economy overall, whether our teenagers are dying in some foreign country, and the personality quirks of the candidates. Policy choices matter at the margins, but not nearly enough to declare that the public “sides with” one choice or the other based on the results of an election.
So this kind of revenge voting doesn’t make much sense knowing what we know now. It is better to spend money in the way they think is good public policy. If they think de-funding the IRS is good public policy, they should do that.