Cantor Takes Obama to Task for Imperial Presidency

 Newsmax

VERBATIM

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has produced an 8,000-word report assailing President Barack Obama for instituting an imperial presidency.

Even The New York Times noted recently on its front page “an increasingly deliberate pattern by the administration to circumvent lawmakers,” Cantor writes.

Pieces appearing over the course of the past several months in The Washington Post, National Review, and The Wall Street Journal have talked about his "imperial presidency."

The Obama administration’s lack of respect for the law is hampering economic growth and individual prosperity, particularly the jobs market, he says.

“Property rights and rule of law are essential for the proper and efficient functioning of society and the economy,” Cantor states.

“When ‘laws’ are created without going through Congress; when laws are selectively executed; when an administration intervenes into the normal judicial process and diminishes an individual's property rights; and when the normal regulatory process is circumvented, the rule of law is eroded.”

That’s exactly what has happened under Obama, Cantor says.

“While administrations of both political parties have been known to test the bounds of the limits of their power, the breadth of the breakdown in the rule of law in recent years has reached new levels,” he writes.

Cantor’s report cites more than 40 examples of the White House’s lack of respect for the law.

This includes:

• Ignoring Advise & Consent, such as through recess appointments;

• Creating laws outside of the Congressional process, such as changing the unionization process, telling businesses where they are allowed to locate, imposing propaganda mandates on employers, telling federal contractors who they have to hire, regulation of hydraulic fracturing, establishing a national ocean regulatory policy, creating a new land regulation program, global warming regulations, network neutrality regulations, auto efficiency mandate, claiming the power to define what constitutes religious employment, draconian regulation of coal;

• Ignoring the Plain Letter of the Law & Failing to Faithfully Execute the Law, such as waiving work requirements under welfare; the contraception mandate and the rights of religious employers, expansion of the refundable tax credit providing for premium assistance, Medicare Advantage quality bonus demonstration, medical loss ratio requirement for health insurers, termination of Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, rewriting bankruptcy law, failing to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, recognition of Jerusalem, lobbying for abortion overseas, halting the airport screening partnership program, expedited airport screening for members of the Armed Forces, DREAM Act deferred action, administrative amnesty for illegal immigrants, withholding critical information about counterfeit goods, Medicare Solvency Requirements;

• Circumventing the Normal Regulatory Process, such as abuse of sue and settle tactics, re-write of coal regulations, abuse of guidance documents, refusing to disclose regulatory agenda, failing to list essential health benefits, Gulf drilling moratorium; banning uranium mining in Arizona;

• Government By Waiver, such as education policy by waiver and healthcare law waivers;

• Creating New Programs Not Authorized by Congress, such as the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation, new “super” agencies, the healthcare Independent Payment Advisory Board, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

“There is no excuse for this continuous disregard of legislative authority and the Constitutionally-required separation of powers,” Cantor writes.

“This is no way to govern. The President has set a precedent that even his supporters should find troubling. . . . The Founding Fathers wisely gave the President many powers, but making law was not one of them.”


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