Obama to announce executive order on immigration

[King]

If Obama can executive order this I guess I could ban abortion through executive order if I become President.

Yes, winning an election to become President of the United States gives you authority to enact the policies you ran on. It's a strange concept, I know.

[King]

Yes, House and Senate are free to pass all their agenda and the President is free to veto it.

I don't understand the confusion here.

[King]

If Obama can executive order this I guess I could ban abortion through executive order if I become President.

Yes, winning an election to become President of the United States gives you authority to enact the policies you ran on. It's a strange concept, I know.

Which is why Republicans have the right to block his legislation in Congress. They won too.

Yes, this is not in dispute.

The American people voted for gridlock. The system is working. This is what we have.

[King]

Obama made an excellent speech, and it's great he's signing this executive order.  The US should live up to its reputation as the "land of the free", and NOT deport decent people who were brought here as small children.

So, should we not imprison murderors because they have small children? We don't have to deport children born here, but the parents should be deported.

Do you consider illegal immigration to be equal to 1st degree felony murder?

You're also the libertarian type. Do you support drug offenders, even if we were to change the law and end the drug war, be required to fill out their sentences because they broke the law when it was still illegal?

[King]

Again, I do not actually believe illegal immigration is equal to murder. I deleted that line and didn't even plan to respond to it, but I must again refute the twisting of my post.

Twisting your post? It's completely on point with your post.

Yes, we separate murderers from their children because such a heinous act makes you unfit to parent a child. We do not separate misdemeanor offenders from their children because it does not equate to them being unfit to parent. By saying it is okay to take parents away from their children for illegal immigration and using murder as an example, it is saying you consider illegal immigration a first degree felony act on par with murder.

There is no twisting going on here. That is absolutely what you said.

[King]

It should frighten all of us that one man can pass laws by executive order.  The President is not supposed to be dictator and every new law must be passed by Congress.

It should not frighten us that one man elected by the people who is term limited can pass laws by executive order. A dictatorship does not include free and open elections.

Frankly, it frightens me more that people like Louie Gohmert or Charlie Rangel have power to pass laws.  The amount of power Congress has given the kind of person elected to Congress is truly scary.

When you coincide it that the President is not elected by drawn districts but by a total vote of the people and that turn out is nearly double in elections for President than they are in elections for Congress and that the President faces a legitimate opponent while most members of Congress run unopposed, the President is clearly more a Representative of the People than the Congress of the United States.

Not to mention with the President we are actually having this debate on his actions. The President had to give a nationally televised address to announce this action. Presidential actions are vocal and visible. Congressional actions are done in secret, in committee, and in bribery where a person can amend a bill to his liking and then vote against it for show, completely lying to his/her constituency. The bills are 100x longer than executive orders. Congressional action is impossible to check.  Then, we have the concept of the House and Senate: gerrymandered districts and disproportionately awarded Senate seats.

Any person who is truly afraid of oligarchy, dictatorship, and destruction of citizens rights should support the open Executive Action of the President as a check against the corrupt and nondemocratic institution of the United States Congress as it exists in the 21st Century.

[King]

Also, when you look back at any Presidency since 1980 either partisan or not and look at what Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush and Obama failed to get done and promises they failed to keep, the blame ultimately comes down to Congressional failure to act and Congressional failure to act almost always comes down to leadership getting bought by special interests

The Executive is clearly the superior branch for functioning government while Congress is one giant negative cesspool.

I think this country would be better off if our President had more power to act and then every four years became a true referendum of Presidential policy and not this weird contest of "what I really believe is better than what the Congress was willing to go give me."

It has been the Congress not any President uniformly on the wrong side of history, regardless of partisan divide. It has been the Congress which has violated the Constitution more in actions than any President in history, which the Supreme Court can attest. It has been the Congress which in action has infringed the right of individual states more than any President in history.

So, just throw away the Constitution and a Republican form of government?  If a President can do this what is the point of even having a congress?

Good point. We should seriously consider reforming the Constitution to reign back Congressional overreach and stop its corruption. The House and Senate rules which establish what bills considered and who has power on Capitol Hill are far more unconstitutional and anti-republican than executive orders.

The Congress is not well functioning institution and has not been for quite some time. Saving the Republican form of government could very well be to get rid of it or at least expand the Constitution to clearly definite Senate and House rules, rules for House redistricting, and rules for Congressional campaign finance.

[King]

I don't care what Party does it, the Constitution must be followed.  If a bill can't be passed by Congress, then deal with it.

He is dealing with it.

[King]

I don't care what Party does it, the Constitution must be followed.  If a bill can't be passed by Congress, then deal with it.

He is dealing with it.

Let me explain it this way.

Congress passes laws.  The President can sign them or veto them.  If Congress decides not to pass the law that does not give the President authority to break the rules. 

Nobody has told me what law the President violated with his actions.

[King]

I don't care what Party does it, the Constitution must be followed.  If a bill can't be passed by Congress, then deal with it.

He is dealing with it.

Let me explain it this way.

Congress passes laws.  The President can sign them or veto them.  If Congress decides not to pass the law that does not give the President authority to break the rules. 

Nobody has told me what law the President violated with his actions.

He has violated the Constitution.  This is not in the President's power.

What's not in the Constitution?

[King]

King fails to see that "inaction" by the legislative branch can sometimes (most often?) be a feature rather than a flaw. Is it impossible to envision a scenario where one man given unlimited lawmaking power for four years (but he would not be a dictator, because muh elections) could enact legislation that he dislikes. I am certain that he would be thrilled about George W. Bush making any law he so pleased for 8 years in spite of congressional opposition (although to be fair Bush did kind of set the precedent for this with his executive signing statements, but that should only be more reason to oppose the idea that the executive can effectively exercise a capricious ex post facto line-item veto.

I'm not against legislatures. I am against the United States Congress. You say "muh elections" but what about the United States Congress as it exists today is any different from the House of Lords our Founding Fathers did not want other than "muh elections"? What reason do you have to support the existence of the United States Congress in its current form other than "muh constitution"? It is a terrible body.

There are dozens of nationally non-elected, nationally non-endorsed Mr. Chairmans, Speaker, Whips, etc. running around DC exuding authority over this nation with no check against them by the people. It is the body of government completely out of control and it has been for quite some time. Extending far beyond this Presidency. If the Founders were alive today, they'd call a Constitutional Convention to massively reform, effectively eliminate both the House and Senate as they exist today.

I would have been thrilled for George W Bush to have real power in his 2nd term. His own Congress screwed him on this very issue and then distanced themselves from 2005 onward, then Democrats came in a fought him on foreign policy. We might have been in a better spot as a nation if he had taken more executive action. In business and in personal life matters, the ideology of the plan does not so much make the plan effective as it does the commitment and thoughtfulness of the plan.  Four years of real conservative or real liberal policy would be far more effective than four years of Rube Goldberg Machine public policy.

Everything wrong with government today was created in a bargain to appease some halfwit Congressman. Every earmark, every legal exception, every crap amendment.

Ask yourself this hypothetical, as a citizen, which America would be a stronger nation with a more accountable government: an America where Barack Obama, George W Bush, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Dwight Eisenhower, Franklin Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln governed visibly for four year terms without a Congress or an America where John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, Newt Gingrich, Tip O'Neill, Henry Clay governed as long as their drawn districts kept them in power without a President?

The truth is the statesman that is the President has been America's real defense against corruption,  tyranny, and oligarchy in the Congress for most of our nation's history and not the other way around.

[King]

I was responding to King's "strong presidency" hypothetical.

If I wanted Obama to knuckle under, I would not have supported ACA. That is proof that the legislative process can work.

ACA is working because Obama is doing the necessary executive actions to implement it.

As for your bold Republican hypothesis, again the President is held to a high standard. No President would jeopardize his own re-election by announcing a repeal of SS to the American people. Meanwhile, Republican Congressmen can make such demands in a government shutdown without fear of losing re-election. No President would jeopardize his economy. The Presidential election is a far more accountable election than Congressional elections. The worst President we've ever had (Buchanan?) was a far more reasonable man than most members of the House and Senate today.

Again, the test for asking which branch of government is the cancerous one is which body acting unilaterally would result in the worst outcome: Mitt Romney or the 2010 elected Teabagger house? And for conservatives: Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid as leaders of the free world?

Congress is awful. Period.

[King]

Congressional accomplishments 1776-present:
1. Prolonging slavery, destroying thousands of lives.
2. Rejecting Woodrow Wilson's WWI peace plan, causing World War II.
3. Prolonging our entrance into World War II, destroying thousands of lives.
4. Starting the Civil War
5. Bridge to Nowhere projects
6. McCarthy Hearings, Red Scare, Cold War propaganda
7. Segregation
8. Defense of Marriage Act
9. Debt ceiling crisis

Presidential accomplishments 1776-present:
1. Defeating the British
2. Ending slavery
3. Winning World War I
4. Winning World War II
5. Social Security
6. Medicare
7. Ending the Cold War

Name me one thing the Congress forced a US President to sign that was good for this country. Name me one thing a US President forced the Congress to pass that was bad.

[King]

BloombergView isn't really Bloomberg.

[King]

The lists were obviously hyperbolic bros.