America
We Have A Problem, It's A Constitutional Crisis
Frank
J. Eckert, December 7, 2013 - Townhall
On
the day before Thanksgiving this news was posted at a blog on the
website of the Department of Health and Human Services: The President
of the United States had just made a change in the “Patient
Protection and Affordable Care Act,” better known as ObamaCare.
Shortly
thereafter the Speaker of the House issued a statement in which he
commented that “the president bit off more than he can chew with
this health care law” and, “This law has been an absolute
disaster.” Speaker John Boehner went on to say: “If the president
won’t repeal it, he should at least delay the entire law before it
wreaks any more havoc…”
America,
we have a problem: We are in the midst of a serious constitutional
crisis.
Consider
what has been happening in our nation’s capital: President Barack
Obama has asserted and acted upon the notion that he can at whim and
by decree make changes to law – and Speaker Boehner is complicit
both by his continuing acceptance of the president’s unilaterally
changing law and by his publicly urging the president to do so one
more time.
Worse,
the president’s behavior is not some careless one-time blunder –
it’s a calculated pattern of conduct.
President
Obama has by edict changed provisions of laws governing welfare,
drugs, education and especially ObamaCare, changing the employer
mandate; changing requirements of the federal exchanges for small
businesses; switching a strict income verification requirement to
honor system self-verification; changing the federal exchange
provision to obligate unauthorized billions of dollars in subsidies;
bestowing upon Members of Congress the option of exempting themselves
and their staffs from ObamaCare exchanges; changing statutory
deadlines and reporting requirements; etc.
Besides
refusing to abide by duly-enacted law, he has also actually
fabricated law -- by enforcing provisions of legislation Congress had
refused his request to enact, granting young persons illegally in the
country immunity from deportation, using the absurd claim this was
legitimate exercise of prosecutorial discretion when that’s
something done on a case-by-case basis whereas his blanket action
covered hundreds of thousands.
Congress
as a whole has yet to so much as comment on his usurping its powers
-- and most Members of Congress remain passive, even acquiescent,
many adamantly so. True, a few – very few – of them are at long
last beginning to take this very seriously and last week Congressman
Tom Rice (R-SC) and 29 other Republicans introduced House Resolution
#442 calling for the House to file civil suit challenging the
constitutionality of President Obama’s actions on a number of these
matters. But no one in the House Republican “leadership” is among
the co-sponsors and no hearings have been scheduled on it. Nor has
any similar resolution been proposed in the Senate.
And
the media? They’re barely mindful that for some time now they’ve
been witnessing yet failing to report on a constitutional crisis.
They may now and then quote someone questioning the constitutionality
of the president’s altering law, but generally they report his
doing so as if it were usual procedure and emphasis is instead placed
on things such the timing of announcement and how the change he’s
made might affect the 2014 Congressional elections; that is, the
media unwittingly see it as some minor partisan political squabble
and report it thusly.
But
anyone who passed elementary school social studies or American
history knows – or should know – that a US law cannot be enacted,
changed or repealed unless legislation proposing such passes both
houses of Congress and is signed into law by the President (or in
effect signed into law if the president takes no action for ten days
and Congress is in session). A US President cannot, like some
dictator or absolute monarch, all by himself create, change or repeal
a law if he feels like doing so.
The
US Constitution in Article 2, section 3, requires – requires,
not merely authorizes – that the President of the United States
“shall take
Care that
the Laws be faithfully executed.”
This is not a power bestowed upon the president to exercise or not
exercise as he sees fit – this is a controlling admonition ordering
that he must execute
the country’s laws. It’s his obligation, his responsibility, his
burden, his duty. And he must faithfully do
so. That is -- dependably, truly, devotedly, loyally, stalwartly,
stanchly, steadfastly, determinedly, unwaveringly, resolutely.
If
the Nixon era Watergate affair was -- as The
National Archives,
the nation's official record keeper, puts it -- “a constitutional
crisis that tested and affirmed the rule of law” -- then so, too,
does President Obama’s pattern of lawless, unconstitutional,
alteration of law by arbitrary and capricious decree in deliberate
and brazen violation of the explicit orders given him by Article 2,
section 3, constitute a true constitutional crisis.
Just
as the president has been violating his oath to “preserve, protect
and defend” the Constitution, Members of Congress have, for the
most part, been just as willing to violate their oath to defend and
“bear true faith and allegiance” to it.
Such
oaths matter. The Constitution matters. However despicable it was for
the President and Members of Congress to lie about ObamaCare’s
guaranteeing that you can keep your health care plan and keep your
doctor, it pales in comparison with making a lie of their sacred oath
to faithfully abide by the Constitution.
It
is not even remotely close to the truth, as claimed by the Obama
Administration and many Democrats, that such changes made by the
president fall within his legal authority and, besides, other
presidents have conducted themselves the same way. Try to think of
any other president who has engaged in a pattern of altering law at
whim and by decree. There is none. And even if another president had,
that would be a two-wrongs-makes-a-right excuse.
So
many abuses of the Constitution cry out for attention, among them
that while no revenue bill can become law unless it arises in the
House, ObamaCare arose in the Senate, not the House
“You
can always sue,” declared one prominent Democrat a couple of weeks
ago, knowing full well that while this sounds simple, it’s
simplistic. The courts, especially the Supreme Court, for good reason
have always been strongly averse to intervening in political disputes
between the other two branches of government. It’s very difficult
to establish damages to gain standing to sue – but difficult is not
necessarily impossible and this needs to be pursued.
A
strong case can be made that at no other time in American history has
the country witnessed such a pattern of presidential contempt for the
constraints of the Constitution and the principles of rule by law –
and an even stronger case that at no other time would Congress, the
media and the people have been so almost aggressively apathetic about
such a threat to the Republic.
Congress
should – but doesn’t – have enough sense of responsibility to
refuse to permit such hijacking of its Constitutionally-required role
in law-making.
Under
our system of government, the political opposition – the
Republicans – have a duty to sound the alarm about abuse of power.
It’s long past time for Republicans to begin responding to
presidential trampling on the Constitution with better than mere
boiler-plate cliché commentary about policy differences and
emphasize first and foremost the threat posed by lawless,
unconstitutional, conduct. Because it is an institutional, as opposed
to individual member, action, passage of House Resolution #442
calling for the House to file civil suit challenging the
constitutionality of a number of the president’s actions just might
gain standing and result in serious court action. Speaker Boehner
would be remiss not to test this.
It
is also well past time that the media stop overlooking this
constitutional crisis and begin serious in-depth reporting about it
and its profound implications for the country.
A
people whose heritage is to live under the rule of law governed by
the world’s oldest written constitution have every right to expect
and demand that a government whose very existence is based upon their
consent be made to faithfully abide by law and Constitution just as
they must – and they have a duty to the cause of liberty to resist
such abuse of power.
It
is time for every good citizen to demand of each and every one of our
country’s elected representatives that they acknowledge our current
constitutional crisis and act to re-affirm the rule of law. The
people need to make it known that this will be a major issue when
they go to the polls for the 2014 congressional elections.
My
comments:
President
Obama is willfully acting like a Dictator.
He has
the approval of the Democrat party in doing so.
He has
the tacit approval of the silent Press.
Never
has America faced such a threat.
When
the authority of the Congress,
The
representatives of the people, is thwarted, freedom is no more.
Obama cares nothing for the US Constitution,
He is only interested in his "TRANSFORMATION" of America
Into a godless, Secular Humanist, State.
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