In the course of the first three days of the Nevada County Fair, I have been asked no less than 10 times about our lawless President and what can be done. Well, the first obstacle is that one must show that the President has been lawless. Let's take the example of the lawsuit by the House of Representative and a comment from Michael Chertoff. Imagine that in four years a Republican president decides by executive order that his administration is only going to enforce the tax code up to 10% - meaning that if you owe 28% of your income in taxes but only pay 10% of your income to the IRS, the IRS will not audit you or otherwise enforce the laws of the USA. Is this legal? Well, this example is exactly what Obama has done with the individual mandate. Obamacare states that if you do not obtain health insurance, you owe the IRS a tax. By executive order, Obama has decided to forego collection and ordered the IRS not to enforce such collection of this specific tax that is by law due and payable to the IRS.
I think that we can all agree that these examples demonstrate behavior that is lawless. Further and on the merits, the lawsuit by the House of Representatives (which addresses he individual mandate) is very difficult for Obama to defend and Obama would likely lose on the merits. This lawsuit is not the first example of Obama's overreach, as his administration's position on recess appointments was soundly rejected in the Supreme Court in a 9-0 decision. Unanimous Supreme Court decisions are kind of like a no-hitter in baseball. They do not happen very often, and you do not want to be the team that could not get a single hit. That being said, my personal opinion is that the House of Representatives does not have standing to sue the president, because they were not aggrieved. This case will never see the light of day, and it is going no where.
So what is the remedy? The fact of the matter is that Constitution offers two remedies - term limits and impeachment.
The question proposed to me at the Fair is whether impeaching Obama is the right thing to do. There are two answers to this question. First, is whether impeaching Obama the right thing to do for the health of our democracy. In my opinion, the answer is a resounding yes. See the example above in connection with enforcement of the IRS code. Once the Pandora's box of selective enforcement of the laws created by Congress and the president is opened, amazingly ridiculous things can start happening. If Rick Perry is the president, he could get rid of the EPA and the Department of Education (and all of the statutes and regulations associated therewith) by the stroke of his pen. No more enforcement of the Clean Water Act or the Endangered Species Act or Common Core. Done. If Ted Cruz is the president and as discussed above, Ted Cruz could effectively lower the income tax rate to 10% without consultation of Congress. This Pandora's box opened by Obama is dangerous to our democracy in that it vastly weakens congressional power and vastly expands the power of a single man (whoever the president is), and Congress has a duty to future congresses to not abdicate its power to a totalitarian executive.
The second question is whether there is the political will to impeach a lawless Obama. The answer to this question is a resounding no. By the republicans attempting to impeach former President Clinton for lying under oath in a civil matter, they expended all of their political capital (and that of any party attempting to impeach the president) for decades. Truth be told, people lie in depositions all of the time, and I do not think that lying in a civil deposition was what the founding fathers considered "high crimes and misdemeanors." Now, fast forward 20 years to a time when an impeachment would be based on a true constitutional crisis instead of petty partisan politics, there is no political capital with which to impeach the president. Shame on the republicans 20 years ago for overreaching, but also shame on Obama for overreaching on executive authority now. This lawless precedent set by Obama will most certainly come back to haunt the democratic party for years to come when a republican is the president with democrats in control of only one chamber of Congress.
We are founded as a country of laws, and if the president of the USA can choose which laws to enforce, how is our country any different than the tyranny against which our founders fought?
The Pandora's box is open. The next 20 years of presidential authority will be very interesting to watch. Will the democrats have the political capital to stop a republican president who exercises executive authority like Obama? Doubt it.
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