Holy Executive Overreach, Batman!

Last updated on: June 27, 2014 at 11:07 am by Jane the Actuary

Holy Executive Overreach, Batman! 2014-06-27T11:07:00-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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Is Obama intent on creating “facts on the ground” with respect to immigration, with the expectation that no one will be able to demonstrate standing to sue to stop him?

Here are the latest reports:

From thehill.com, “Democrats: No bluff, Obama will go it alone on immigration“:

President Obama has delayed any potential changes to his deportation policy to allow House GOP leaders time to bring legislation to the floor this summer. But if the Republicans don’t act in July, the Democrats say, unilateral changes by Obama are inevitable.

“We’re at the end of the line,” Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said Thursday during a press briefing in the Capitol. “We’re not bluffing by setting a legislative deadline for them to act.

“Their first job is to govern,” Menendez added, “and in the absence of governing, then you see executive actions.”

And, of course, what Democrats mean when they say that the Republicans need to “pass a bill,” as the article later says, is not just any bill, but a bill that meets the Democrats’ demands. Effectively, they’re demanding, “enact the specific legislation that we want, or we’ll do it anyway.”

Here’s an article from theblaze.com, “Dems block GOP bills to verify status, block tax credits to illegal immigrants“: Senator Jeff Sessions tried to win passage of a bill mandating the use of E-Verify (or, presumably, an equivalent system), and a separate bill stripping illegal immigrants of the ability to claim the child tax credit (which I’ve read separately, they do for even those children living in Mexico or even for imaginary children, as no verification is required). The Democrats’ rationale for opposing these bills:

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) argued that this e-verify provision was in the Senate’s broad immigration bill that passed a year ago, and said Democrats aren’t looking to negotiate passage of sections of that bill.

“We are not going to take that bill apart piece by piece, as the senator from Alabama suggests,” Durbin said. “I object.”

In other words, it’s “my way or the highway” — and the Democrats’ demand is all-or-nothing.

What are the executive orders under consideration? The LA Times (and similarly it’s sister paper the Chicago Tribune, but I couldn’t find the latter online) reports, “Obama puts off plans to soften deportation rules“:

The administration is slowing its timetable for announcing revisions to deportation policies, including one that would stop most deportations of foreigners with no criminal convictions other than immigration violations, according to a senior official familiar with the White House deliberations.

Obama’s advisors are also reconsidering whether to move ahead with a separate, still-tentative plan before the November midterm election that could allow the parents of young people who were brought into the country illegally to stay and work, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal deliberations.

Which means that, if you pair these reports, as soon as Obama decides to pull the trigger, the “Dream” amnesty will be widened massively: no deportations except for criminals (and already, there are plenty of reports that “criminal” is being defined in practice in a limited way) and work permits for a large number of people. After all, it logically doesn’t make sense to amnesty parents of illegal children but not parents of citizen children — and it seems improbable that the administration will limit it to children born before a given date, which means that a whole cohort of immigrants will hurry up and procreate.

And what then?

Has any president ever dared take on such power? To what end? It seems so unfathomably destructive. It’s true that Establishment Republicans have been doing quite nicely in their primaries, helped by lots of cash and the power of incumbency. Perhaps the Democrats have done the math and have determined that enough of their seats are safe that they’re at no risk of losing their Senate majority, or in any event, they’ll be safe enough as long as the GOP doesn’t have a veto-proof majority and Obama can continue to do what he wants until 2016 — whether it’s military intervention or lack thereof, or immigration, or doing whatever he chooses in the arena of health care under the mantle of “executive discretion in Affordable Care Act implementation,” or any such issue.

Now, look, I don’t want to get into a “Obama is destroying our democracy” rant, let alone the conspiratorial statements that Obama will declare a dictatorship and refuse to leave office, but it is extremely disturbing to have our elected officials announcing that they’ll do what they please, laws be damned.

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