Obama to announce executive order on immigration

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

In fact the comparison is very apt, because the Emancipation Proclamation was a war time power and could very well have been nullfied by the Supreme Court or rescinded by a future President. Only Congressional action could provide the necessary permenance to deal with the issue.

Likewise with immigration, governing by executive order is exactly the wrong approach because it means that is subject to the arbitrary nature of the President's political whims and that very instability in policy will worsen the underlying problem on that subject.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

King has really knocked it out of the park in this thread. God damn.

Actually he tripped up rather badly from a historical perspective.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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.

Oh I see your standard now. Typically though, The Presidents work with congress like with the Wars you mention, or worked with allies in the Congress like with 13th Amendment to get the job done. And as for the Wars, what degree of forcing was necessary? All but 1 in both instances voted for war. If there was ever a case of a President forcing a Congress to eat a war, it was in 2007 and 2008 with Iraq. In most all other cases, they were along for the ride. Unless there is an implication that Wilson/FDR had some kind of secret involvement in the Zimmerman Note/Pearl Harbor. There attempts to produce involvement didn't gain traction until a threat to the homeland was established.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

4. Starting the Civil War

Congress set the stage by failing to resolve the crisis in advance over years of it building up. However, it was the Supreme Court rulling, involving a President violating the seperation of powers in the process, that pushed the two sides beyond the point of no return and created the majority in the North ready to back a Lincoln. It was then the same Constitution violating President, who then sat and did nothing as the first seven states walked out of the union and let his Secretary of War transfer military resources to the South with no oversight so that it coudl be seized and used by the soon to be formed Confederacy. The Civil War's beginning is no example of Executive Competence against Congressional inaction, the exact opposite is true.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

7. Segregation

This is full of irony because prior to Truman, it was Congress always trying to force the hands of the PResident and Senate into action. While FDR ignored them and his own wife on the issue for the sake of his New Deal, so that he wouldn't have to force number 5 on your list of Congressional accomplishments through among others and they would said through instead.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

If the GOP is really upset about this then pass a bill to deal with the undocumented. They can either find a path to legal status or appropriate funds (2012 study estimated to be $285B) to deport them all. Those are their two choices.

There is always more then two options.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Six consecutive posts seems a bit much.

I wanted to break the last three points out into their own discussions as they really deserve it.

Ironically I sympathize with King's overall point about the horrible nature of congress and ironically I would include this issue of immigration in my magic list of horrible things that Congress has done but it cannot be contrasted with the Executive because typically they led the charge or played along as Congress passed a flawed bill like in 1986.

I also wanted to acknowedge the last paragraph of King's post because I missed it initially, but it barely changes the points that I made because his standard seems to vary with each point and some of the things he listed were either examples where all three branches were terrible (Civil War) or merely an exmaple where the President led but Congress was hardly hostile to the attempt (New Deal and the Wars). My preference is to avoid creating those nasty little openings for various people on hear to put words in my mouth, but on the flip side I would prefer to avoid walls of text that no one reads and that I no longer have the time to create anymore.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Disagree with the way he did it, and the executive action doesn't go far enough securing our border with Mexico, which makes me hesitant to support the other aspects of the law, which I would otherwise gladly embrace.

The over-emphasis on border security ignores critical enforcement aspects and is part of why we have a bill  that throws a bunch of money at the border combined with amnesty and opponents are left having to square "lack of border security" as a justification with a bill that ostensibly includes a lot of border security.

1. You have to secure the border, but you reach a point where further such resources yields diminishing results...

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

"Secure the border" has become a catch all phrase for general enforcement. The emphasis on it is a mistake thus. As we have seen there is no faith in the President to actually enforce the law amongst Republicans and even some independents, and furthering that only puts us further away from an actual resolution to the problem. I should note that the 2007 Immigration bill that crashed and burned was deeply unpopular even as polling showed support for a path of some kind by like a 10% to 15% margin at the time.

The real reason that system is broken, legal immigration problems aside (they need to be fixed) is because there is no desire to keep to the numbers you set. At some point you have say this is the absolute limit and beyond that no, and if you come anyway, you will be deported (and you have to mean it), even as you legalize those that are here now. That is how you arrive at a permenent fix. As long as all you are willing to both now and in the future, is to deport those who commit crimes other than that of illegal immigration to the US, the problem continues and the system will remain broken.

Ironically, the executive branch has done more to break the system then Congress, though both are responsible. So once again the touted fix/reform is the perpetuation of the status quo, which seems to be the going thing on this issue.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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.

...when you have 60 senators from the majority party, which the Dems enjoyed for like 5 months in 2009. Unsustainable.

Coakley blew it, but in the end MA of all states voted in number 41 Scott Brown to stop the healthcare law. That says that somewhere along the line Democrats screwed up rather badly in the process of forming and passing the law. The size of he majority bred complacency as did the promises of its forty year longevity. They thought they had time to squabble over different components and such forth.

If Obama had started with immigration he would have had it by August of 2009 most likely.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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.

...when you have 60 senators from the majority party, which the Dems enjoyed for like 5 months in 2009. Unsustainable.

Coakley blew it, but in the end MA of all states voted in number 41 Scott Brown to stop the healthcare law. That says that somewhere along the line Democrats screwed up rather badly in the process of forming and passing the law. The size of he majority bred complacency as did the promises of its forty year longevity. They thought they had time to squabble over different components and such forth.

If Obama had started with immigration he would have had it by August of 2009 most likely.

Like I said, requiring 60 votes in the Senate to pass law is a symptom of a broken government. We have natural swings toward the middle and the party in power is judged by their ability to govern. A President with huge majorities in both houses shouldn't be limited to the first 1.5 initiatives he can accomplish before natural trends reduce the majority to just very large. Remember the impact of Norm Coleman's lawsuit.

I don't expect blue avatars to sympathize with the Dem agenda in 2009 but I hope you'll consider the impact of a majority party being judged on their efficacy by voters when the minority party--in some cases, a minority party reduced to a small regional rump--can exercise a veto and then run against the majority for its inability to govern.

Yes, but with Graham, McCain, Lugar, Bennett, Collins, Snowe, Murkowski, Gregg, Brownback, Martinez, Kyl, Voinovich, Lugar, Specter (who switched of course), there were more then enough votes with all those Democrats to pass amnesty. In our household it was considered a foregone conclusion with no cards left to play to prevent the inevitable. That it didn't happen came as a litteral shock to us all.

Imagine if Republicans had won VA 2006, MT 2006, AK 2008 and MN 2008.