The president's precident

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

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.

Comments

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

What does being federal have anything to do with it at all? Executives enforce the law that legislatives make.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Because the executive branch of the federal government is a very different position than a cheriff. You can't compare the two.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Not really no, once you remove the foreign relations aspect of the job from the equation the federal executive's relation with the law is no different.


as gunslnger said, the legislative writes it and the executive enforces.

The president saying that he will not be, or worse, selectively enforcing a federal law is no different from a sheriff (or your local equivalent) saying the same thing about a state and/or municipal law.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

No it's totally different. Its outlined in the constitution, barely and its the highest law in the land. The sheriff is no such thing, not close. he's not running a country, not even a state. This isn't comparable, and I'm not interested in discussing it further.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Im not sure if youre being intentionally difficult, or have just never lived in a state where the county authorities wield any sort of real power.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

I have lived in plenty of countries, but I have the feeling that you just don't understand the exponential difference in authority between a local executive and the executive of a country. This is the difference between a photon collision and a human moving an arm.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

That you think the order of magnitude is that great is what makes me wonder.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

In terms of power magnitude.


I'm also trying to figure out what I was trying to say there. I think I meant plenty of counties. I've lived in lots of counties, only one country.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

That's an order of magnitude in the realm of billion trillions. I'm not sure there are a billion trillion local executives in the entire galaxy. ;)

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

One could hope but still...

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

In terms of power, not by literal numbers.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

Mass is energy, and energy is mass. And energy/mass creates power. The energy/mass equivalent of a human moving an arm, related to that of a photon, is larger than the energy/mass equivalent of all the stars in all the galaxies within the observable universe as it relates to that of the Sun.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

No. :P The power of the office of the President of the US compared to the power of a local sheriff. :P

It's not supposed to be an exact analogy, it's just illustrating these are on drastically different scales.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

You do know what an analogy is, right? Because you aren't acting like it.