Pandora and Barack

Much of the discussion since the president went on TV last week to tell the country that he was no longer enforcing immigration laws has been about, well, immigration laws.  Since it was the topic of the speech, well, duh, no surprise there.

I do find a couple things interesting that have nothing to do with immigration.  Most important is that Obama had to have made a conscious decision to trade this specific action for the likelihood that a subsequent Republican president would do the same thing.

I really find that curious.  Was it so important to take this move now, knowing that the incoming Congress in a few weeks would be able to pass and put on the president's desk a bill covering the topic?  The risk is really great, after all.  As someone mentioned on the news a couple days back, there is nothing to say that a President Ted Cruz might decide in 2017 that the alternative minimum tax is just unfair and a burden to the middle class, so he is directing the IRS to cease enforcing it.

In such a case, the only Democrats entitled to speak are the few -- and there have been a few -- who speak out right now in opposition to the use of an Executive Order to suspend enforcement of the laws of the USA.  I will go on record right now to say that I question the right of any president to issue an Executive Order that affects the enforcement of Federal law.  I'm in accord with the right of Congress to suspend funding for certain activities of executive agencies, but only because, while I'm not a fan of that kind of action, it is absolutely constitutional and within their right.

But on this one, Obama has opened a classic Pandora's box.  If it is legal and constitutional for the president to suspend the enforcement of laws passed by Congress, then it is the same when done by a president of the other party.  So why did he think it was worth the trade-off?  After all, the next president to do this won't take a tenth of the grief that Obama will take for doing it the first time.

Right after I drafted this piece, I saw a clip from an interview over the weekend given by Obama to George Stephanopoulos.  He was asked about the precedent set for future presidents (I believe he was asked about enforcing capital gains taxes), and whether he was afraid his action would lead to such future Executive Orders.  "No", he said in a rambling reply, "because this was something we had to do."  How frightening that one man can decide when something he thinks he "has to do" trumps the Constitution.  That, friends, is a definitional dictatorship, and pretty darned scary.  By the way, I think we "need to" dump the Alternative Minimum Tax.   Just saying.

I hope that this action is taken quickly to the Supreme Court.  I think it is more important that the Court get the opportunity to rule on its constitutionality than what they actually rule.  Really, I do.  I'm not a constitutional scholar of any kind; I just want the definition of the separation of powers as it applies to this type of action to be no longer the subject of dispute.

Because if it is still unclear as to whether the president can interpret and enforce passed law as he chooses, Pandora will have done her thing once again.  And, friends, it is not a good America with that box opened.

Copyright 2014 by Robert Sutton