“The greatest danger to American Freedom is a government that ignores the Constitution”
Thomas Jefferson
Speaker Boehner’s announcement to seek House authorization initiating a lawsuit against the president is long-overdue by Congress in light of their solemn oath to “support and defend the Constitution”.
A system of checks and balances between the three branches of our federal government is a cornerstone of our Constitution; one whose rationale was best articulated by Ezra Taft Benson, “The founders had a strong distrust for centralized power in a federal government. So they created a government with checks and balances … to prevent any branch of the government from becoming too powerful.”
Unfortunately, despite their limited, enumerated powers, presidents have unilaterally assumed unto themselves extra-constitutional authority while successive Congresses have failed miserably in properly executing their Constitutional responsibilities. Collectively, these transgressions represent a clear and present danger to our representative form of government and our republic.
Meanwhile, our elected leaders feed our ever-growing, constitutionally-illiterate public a diet of sound bites designed to convince, coerce or frighten the electorate into accepting successive “the sky is falling” scenarios to justify such unconstitutional usurpations of power and avoidances of sworn Constitutional obligations.
Four egregious examples of their failures:
The War Powers Act – wherein Congress, despite the fact that only it has the power “to declare war” (Article I Section 8) has effectively delegated that role to the president. Yet, there is no Constitutional provision permitting the delegation of enumerated powers by one branch to another.
Still, nine of the thirteen presidents since 1945 have taken the U.S. into or continued to prosecute undeclared wars costing Americans the lives of 100,000+ service men and women, 500,000+ injured/maimed and more than $6 trillion.
Presidential Signing Statements – now appended to many bills signed by presidents in successive Administrations often indicate they plan to intentionally ignore sections they find objectionable, possibly unconstitutional or simply don’t want to enforce.
Until 1980 there were only 75 presidential signing statements issued, generally triumphal, rhetorical, or political proclamations and went mostly unannounced. Since then, 1,107 signing statements have been issued, 401 of which raised constitutional concerns or were objectionable to the president.
Legally however, presidents have only two options (the Presentment Clause – Article I Section 7); they can sign such bills, after which they are obligated to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” (Article II Section 3) or they can veto them, returning them to Congress with their objections. Signing statements constitutes a defacto line item veto which the U.S. Supreme Court declared unconstitutional in Clinton v. New York.
Until now, Congress has remained silent; as partisan protection of political parties has trumped adherence to the Constitution.
Overreach of Executive Orders – by which presidents often attempt to create, circumvent and/or ignore laws enacted by Congress which they dislike or find inconvenient. The fact presidents believe Congress, or one party in particular, is unwilling to move legislation or nominations forward may be distasteful, it does not give them the power to sidestep Congress or ignore the law.
President Bush’s Executive Orders authorization of the NSA’s warrantless eavesdropping and Obama’s recess appointments to the NLRB, unilaterally making thirty-plus changes to sections of Obamacare, raising the minimum wage for federal workers and directing the Justice Department and ICE to modify or ignore immigration laws are blatant examples of presidential disregard of the Executive Branch’s limited authority. Fortunately, the Supreme Court has just negated such presidential overreach in the cases of the NSA and the NLRB.
Willfully ignoring of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments – which state, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” and “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Perhaps, before being permitted to take the oath of office and annually thereafter, the president and members of Congress should be required to reread and pass a test on the Constitution. Then they might remember it is a document enumerating specific powers and responsibilities granted to, while concurrently placing strict limits on, each branch rather than being an invitation to micromanage all aspects of American citizens’ lives, abdicate their responsibilities, exceed the limits of their authority of office or do a host of other things not spelled out in 1789.
Failing such a test, they should be issued a copy of Jefferson’s July 4th 1776 Declaration to George III.
