Bum & Dumb Obama’s Unilateral Presidency Crashes Into the Constitution
By Liz Peek
2 hours ago
Bam! That’s the
sound of Bum & Dumb President Obama smacking head first into our nation’s system of
checks and balances. It turns out that you actually can’t run
the country all by yourself, even if you’re the smartest fellow in the
room. That’s proving quite a shock to our legacy-hungry commander in
chief, who is responding to various setbacks with increasing indignation
and hauteur. But, never, ever, moderation.
The Bum & Dumb Mr. Obama has
pursued an ambitious agenda since he entered the White House,
increasingly acting alone. Ever since he won passage of Obamacare in
2010 through an odious series of back-room favors, and then got burned
looking for a “Grand Bargain” on the budget with House Speaker John
Boehner, he has eschewed the normal horse-trading with Congress and
chosen to govern instead through executive actions and regulations.
Just
as his favored military option is clean-hands drone attacks, he has
kept his dealings with Congress sanitary, at arm’s length. That
fastidious approach now threatens his second-term program. Not only is Congress balking, but also the Supreme Court could block several of Mr. Obama’s cherished programs. He has only himself to blame.
On
the griddle currently is the president’s Trans Pacific Trade pact,
which Democrats in Congress oppose. Members of his own party snubbed
President Obama’s humiliating last-ditch overtures -- a rare visit to
Congress and schmoozing Nancy Pelosi at a baseball game. According to The Atlantic,
he promised goodies galore – rides on Air force One, Oval Office visits
and campaign help for those willing to vote for his bill. He hoped to
counter AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka’s reported threats that Big Labor
will mount primary challenges against those who back the trade measure.
The offers – and the jawboning -- from the increasingly lame duck president flopped.
Representative Peter Defazio from Oregon told reporters, “The President
tried to both guilt people and impugn their integrity. I was
insulted." Another House Democrat, according to CNN, said Obama "was
fine until he turned at the end and became indignant and alienated some
folks.” Republicans were not shocked; Obama has impugned their
integrity as well as their honesty and patriotism repeatedly over the
past seven years.
The
TPP is essential to Obama’s foreign policy legacy. Elsewhere, his
adventures overseas have been disastrous. The president has created a
power vacuum in which Russia and China are increasingly belligerent, and
ISIS spreads its influence unchecked. So, the famous pivot to Asia is
all that’s left – and that hangs by the thread of the TPP.
Meanwhile,
the courts may squash other portions of his vaunted legacy. The Supreme
Court will rule shortly on the fate of Obamacare; this time the Roberts
Court may pull the plug on the program. In response, President Obama is
indignant, and he is once again being dishonest about Obamacare. (See “lie of the year”2013:
“If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it.”)
In recent days, Bum & Dumb Obama has rebuked the Court for taking up King v. Burwell,
and suggested that the challenge to state-provided subsidies is but one
more GOP-led partisan assault on his signature healthcare program. He
claims the language of the law is simply a goof; that it was always
expected that everyone would be eligible for subsidized health
insurance, whether or not their state had set up its own exchange.
The Bum & Dumb Mr.
Obama has one small problem: Jonathan Gruber. The MIT economist and
architect of Obamacare – he who so memorably claimed the law would never
have passed but for the stupidity of American voters – at a conference
in 2012 said this: "What’s important to remember politically about this
is if you're a state and you don’t set up an exchange, that means your citizens don't get their tax credits.”
Denying
subsidies to those living in states that failed to set up their own
exchanges was integral to the Affordable Care Act. It was the stick, and
the carrot. But, it failed, because opposition to Obamacare was
intense, and many state legislatures chose to not to participate. They
recognized that the cost of setting up the exchange would be high, and
that their citizens generally opposed the giant overturn of our
healthcare industry. Those 37 states that did not set up their own
exchanges were lawfully rejecting the president’s healthcare program – a law passed with not one Republican vote.
Bum & Dumb President
Obama’s large-scale executive action on immigration is also threatened
by the courts. At the end of last month, the federal Fifth Circuit Court upheld an injunction
from a judge in Texas that put the program on hold. As a result,
Obama’s plan to protect millions here illegally from deportation cannot
be implemented. Twenty-six states have sued to overturn the program,
claiming it had not been enacted legally; this initiative could remain
mired in the courts for some time.
Meanwhile,
the Supreme Court is deciding the fate of an impending 2012
Environmental Protection Agency rule that for the first time requires
power plants to reduce emissions of mercury and other pollutants. The
case hinges on whether the EPA’s estimate of $9.6 billion in annual
costs emanating from the regulation is, as required under the Clean Air
Act, “appropriate and necessary.”
A negative ruling would set back Mr. Obama’s environmental program,
which has largely relied on EPA regulations rather than laws established
by Congress.
The founders
of our country understood that too much power in the hands of the
executive branch was unwise. In the past seven years we have seen that
they were correct. President Obama has backed one major measure after
another that Americans dislike; unlike most of his predecessors, Mr.
Bum & Dumb Obama has never moderated his positions to reflect the country’s
opposition. Thankfully, we have checks and balances on the president’s
authority provided through Congress and our court system. Bum & Dumb President
Obama’s real legacy may well be reaffirming the wisdom of those
constitutional restraints.