XPost: ba.politics, dc.media, soc.penpals   
   XPost: alt.burningman   
   From: obama-the-illegal@barackobama.com   
      
   President Obama’s increasingly grandiose claims for presidential   
   power are inversely proportional to his shriveling presidency.   
   Desperation fuels arrogance as, barely 200 days into the 1,462   
   days of his second term, his pantry of excuses for failure is   
   bare, his domestic agenda is nonexistent and his foreign policy   
   of empty rhetorical deadlines and red lines is floundering. And   
   at last week’s news conference he offered inconvenience as a   
   justification for illegality.   
      
   Explaining his decision to unilaterally rewrite the Affordable   
   Care Act (ACA), he said: “I didn’t simply choose to” ignore the   
   statutory requirement for beginning in 2014 the employer mandate   
   to provide employees with health care. No, “this was in   
   consultation with businesses.”   
      
   He continued: “In a normal political environment, it would have   
   been easier for me to simply call up the speaker and say, you   
   know what, this is a tweak that doesn’t go to the essence of the   
   law. .?.?. It looks like there may be some better ways to do   
   this, let’s make a technical change to the law. That would be   
   the normal thing that I would prefer to do. But we’re not in a   
   normal atmosphere around here when it comes to Obamacare. We did   
   have the executive authority to do so, and we did so.”   
      
   Serving as props in the scripted charade of White House news   
   conferences, journalists did not ask the pertinent question:   
   “Where does the Constitution confer upon presidents the   
   ‘executive authority’ to ignore the separation of powers by   
   revising laws?” The question could have elicited an Obama   
   rarity: brevity. Because there is no such authority.   
      
   Obama’s explanation began with an irrelevancy. He consulted with   
   businesses before disregarding his constitutional duty to “take   
   care that the laws be faithfully executed.” That duty does not   
   lapse when a president decides Washington’s “political   
   environment” is not “normal.”   
      
   When was it “normal”? The 1850s? The 1950s? Washington has been   
   the nation’s capital for 213 years; Obama has been here less   
   than nine. Even if he understood “normal” political environments   
   here, the Constitution is not suspended when a president decides   
   the “environment” is abnormal.   
      
   Neither does the Constitution confer on presidents the power to   
   rewrite laws if they decide the change is a “tweak” not   
   involving the law’s “essence.” Anyway, the employer mandate is   
   essential to the ACA.   
      
   Twenty-three days before his news conference, the House voted   
   264 to 161, with 35 Democrats in the majority, for the rule of   
   law — for, that is, the Authority for Mandate Delay Act. It   
   would have done lawfully what Obama did by ukase. He threatened   
   to veto this use of legislation to alter a law. The White House   
   called it “unnecessary,” presumably because he has an   
   uncircumscribed “executive authority” to alter laws.   
      
   In a 1977 interview with Richard Nixon, David Frost asked:   
   “Would you say that there are certain situations .?.?. where the   
   president can decide that it’s in the best interests of the   
   nation .?.?. and do something illegal?”   
      
   Nixon: “Well, when the president does it, that means it is not   
   illegal.”   
      
   Frost: “By definition.”   
      
   Nixon: “Exactly, exactly.”   
      
   Nixon’s claim, although constitutionally grotesque, was less so   
   than the claim implicit in Obama’s actions regarding the ACA.   
   Nixon’s claim was confined to matters of national security or   
   (he said to Frost) “a threat to internal peace and order of   
   significant magnitude.” Obama’s audacity is more spacious; it   
   encompasses a right to disregard any portion of any law   
   pertaining to any subject at any time when the political   
   “environment” is difficult.   
      
   Obama should be embarrassed that, by ignoring the legal   
   requirement concerning the employer mandate, he has validated   
   critics who say the ACA cannot be implemented as written. What   
   does not embarrass him is his complicity in effectively   
   rewriting the ACA for the financial advantage of self-dealing   
   members of Congress and their staffs.   
      
   The ACA says members of Congress (annual salaries: $174,000) and   
   their staffs (thousands making more than $100,000) must   
   participate in the law’s insurance exchanges. It does not say   
   that when this change goes into effect, the current federal   
   subsidy for this affluent cohort — up to 75 percent of the   
   premium’s cost, perhaps $10,000 for families — should be   
   unchanged.   
      
   When Congress awakened to what it enacted, it panicked: This   
   could cause a flight of talent, making Congress less wonderful.   
   So Obama directed the Office of Personnel Management, which has   
   no power to do this, to authorize for the political class   
   special subsidies unavailable for less privileged and less   
   affluent citizens.   
      
   If the president does it, it’s legal? “Exactly, exactly.”   
      
   http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-obamas-   
   unconstitutional-steps-worse-than-nixons/2013/08/14/e0bd6cb2-   
   044a-11e3-9259-e2aafe5a5f84_story.html   
      
       
      
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