Beware the Imperial Presidency

It is being reported that President Obama, in his State of the Union address today, will declare his intention to use executive authority to bypass Congress. A plethora of programs are to be pushed through on the economy, job training, infrastructure repair, climate change, and education.  White House Press Secretary Jay Carney foreshadowed Obama's address saying on Sunday on  ABC This Week that the President will "bypass Congress" when necessary in 2014, and take unilateral executive action to carry out his agenda. In an argument with Chris Wallace of Fox News, Obama Senior White House Advisor Dan Pfeiffer said the following "This can be a year of action. And we can make real progress. But we have to do it together. If Congress doesn't act, the president will."

Does this not frighten anyone?  Lest we forget, there have been others in history who have grabbed unilateral power claiming need to do so "for the sake of the people."  

On 24 March 1933. Hitler was granted  "temporarily" by the passage of the Enabling Act the freedom to enact laws without parliamentary consent. The formal name of the Enabling Act was Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich (English: "Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich".) The Act allowed Hitler and his Cabinet to rule by emergency decree. Hitler immediately set about abolishing the powers of the states and the existence of non-Nazi political parties and organizations. The Act effectively eliminated the Reichstag (the German Congress) as active players in German politics. While its existence was protected by the Enabling Act, essentially it reduced the Reichstag to a mere stage for Hitler's speeches.

While the Obama Administration's stated threat of pushing through programs bypassing Congress if necessary  may seem well-intended and benign by progressives hungry to move liberal initiatives forward, it should be viewed as  an outrageous and dangerous move for all regardless of political leaning.  There is a reason that our government was designed with checks and balances.  It was to protect us all from the unilateral rule of a King or Emperor or one man, one regime trying to assume King-like control.     History has demonstrated how pernicious that can be.  Other Presidents have been able to work with Congresses controlled by the opposite Party including as recent as the Clinton Administration. We cannot  allow one man to justify bypassing our elected legislators because his Administration is unable to effectively work with the Congress to accomplish goals.   Even the suggestion of this demonstrates a frightening disregard for our constitution and our rights therein.  

How Democrats Kill Jobs

While Democrats continue to claim that they are focused on “putting Americans back to work,” Democratic policies led by President Obama have continued to kill jobs.

Job growth declined sharply in December, with only 74,000 jobs added, according to the government’s January labor report, the weakest month for job growth since January 2011. While the unemployment rate dropped to 6.7 percent, the only reason for this so-called improvement is the decline of labor force participation, at the lowest level since 1978.

Meanwhile, President Obama has spent $831 billion of taxpayer money on a stimulus plan for the economy, $264 billion of which went to entitlement programs (http://www.recovery.gov/arra/Transparency/fundingoverview/Pages/entitlements-details.aspx#MedicaidMedicare)   Among other recipients were $50 billion to General Motors to keep it afloat and $500 million to energy company Solyndra.  All of the above were supposed to save jobs.

Now here comes his own signature initiative, Obamacare. The Republican argument has been that for many employers, the cost of providing health insurance to mainly low-income workers would be huge. Logically, many firms would try to evade the expense. There are two ways of doing this. First, businesses with fewer than 50 full-time workers are exempt from the insurance requirement (the “employer mandate”). So, a simple strategy would be don’t hire that 50th worker – killing potential new jobs. The second way is to make workers part time by cutting their weekly hours to less than 30 (Obamacare’s threshold for full-time workers). While the Administration contends this has not been the case, the job numbers suggest the opposite when we see only 74,000 jobs added in December.

Then there is the ultimate irony, the President has outsourced ObamaCare. After a disastrous rollout, the White House has hired Accenture as the new lead contractor. The deal, estimated to be worth $90 million, is now in the hands of the poster boy for global labor outsourcing – India, Pakistan, Ireland will benefit from jobs from Obamacare as well as non-American H1-B-visa workers. (Accenture used to be called Andersen Consulting, which was associated with Arthur Andersen, the accounting firm found to be complicit in the Enron scandal.)