Why Obama's Executive Orders Are Lawless

When Barack Obama took the oath of office, he agreed, before God and our country, that he would "...preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."  In doing so, he also agreed to Article Two, Clause Five of the Constitution which states that the President must "faithfully execute the laws of the land".  The word "faithfully" in that statement is clearly defined by Webster's Dictionary as "strict or thorough performance of one's duty." Faithfully does not mean that the President can arbitrarily execute the laws of the land.  Nor, does it say he can ignore those parts of the Constitution he doesn't like.

In our power-balanced system of government, only Congress has the right to create or amend laws; and, once signed into law they become the responsibility of that President and all future President's to "faithfully" execute and uphold them.  If, however, the law is somehow unconstitutional, the courts can strike it down; but, not the President. Therein lies the problem with a number of executive orders issued by Obama.  Especially those associated with the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that he, himself, signed into law.  If he didn't like the mandates of the ACA, including the dates of implementation, he should have vetoed it.  That was his right under our Constitution.  But, instead, by signing it into law, he agreed to "faithfully" execute it.

Some on the left, like Juan Williams, a writer for the Hill.com and a Fox News contributor, seem to think that the issue of lawlessness is, somehow, just a numbers game; arguing that George Bush and Bill Clinton issued twice as many executive orders than has Obama.  I suppose, then, from this, we are to believe that both Clinton and Bush were twice as lawless as Obama. That argument is just a another canard; being served up for the benefit of the dumbest in our society who don't know any better.  Both Clinton and Bush were cautious to issue executive orders that could not be construed as being unconstitutional.  Clinton even waived off an opportunity to kill Bin Laden because he thought that it could be interpreted as an illegal or unconstitutional act.

In Obama's case, he revels in blatant, in-your-face violations of the Constitution.  Neither Clinton nor Bush would have issued an executive order forcing "all" religious organizations to  provide free contraception methods and abortive drugs to their employees; thus, violating the protection of religious rights and freedoms. Yet, in the case of President Obama, he is taking this lawlessness all the way to the Supreme Court, with many experts believing that the "contraception" order will be found unconstitutional.

We should have known from his earliest days in office that Obama would use his "pen" to violate the laws of the land for purely political reasons.  In February of 2009, just days before he signed his $787 billion stimulus package into law, he issued an executive order entitled: "USE OF PROJECT LABOR AGREEMENTS FOR FEDERAL CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS".  In effect, this was payback to the unions for their help in his election.  Under that executive order, union work rules and union pay scales were mandated for all Federal construction projects; especially all those projects that were being outlined in the Stimulus Package.  So, when it was eventually signed into law,  the vast majority of all of those so-called shovel-ready jobs were invalidated by the President's previous executive order on union work rules and pay.  Then, all those projects had to be rebid at higher costs with either union or union-like labor.  That's the primary reason that the $787 billion Stimulus Package wound up costing the taxpayer $831 billion and why so many shovel-ready projects were cancelled or delayed. Then, in 2011, Obama looked back and quipped that "Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected!" as if he had nothing to do with it.

In my opinion, Obama's continued use of executive orders just proves his ineptness in the "horse trading" skills that we have seen, and have come to expect, from our past presidents.  This president simply cannot negotiate or compromise.  There are no carrots in his quiver; only sticks.

References:

Executive Order: Use of Project Labor Agreements (PLA): http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ExecutiveOrderUseofProjectLaborAgreementsforFederalConstructionProjects

Obama Jokes About Shovel-ready Jobs: http://nation.foxnews.com/president-obama/2011/06/13/obama-jokes-jobs-council-shovel-ready-was-not-shovel-ready-we-expected

Hank Crumpton, Former CIA Officer: Clinton Wouldn't Authorize Osama Bin Laden Kill In 1999: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/14/hank-crumpton-cia-clinton-bin-laden_n_1514895.html

February 14th, Juan Williams to Martha MacCallum on Fox: "I can't even understand why Mr. Limbaugh's so upset, because when I look at the actual numbers, you see that President Obama has used an executive order to go around the Congress, I think it's less than half of the time of Bill Clinton, and just over half of the time of President George W. Bush. So it just doesn't make sense to me, I mean, unless you're trying to demonize President Obama and say he's lawless and he's a bad guy": http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2014/02/14/it_s_obama_s_lawlessness_that_matters_not_his_motivation