elizabeth price foley. professor of constitutional law at florida international university. thanks a lot for joining us this morning. good morning. what is the president attempting to do unilaterally without congress? well, he is trying to do a lot of things unilaterally without congress. let me just say at the beginning, you know, a the lo of people say you know, president obama is only issuing so many number of executive orders and that s a lot less than his predecessors have. i have to say, you know, this is not about quantity. there are a lot of executive orders that are perfectly constitutional. this is about the quality of the executive orders and what exactly he is trying to do. let s start with obamacare delays. obamacare passes. throw and a half years ago, it s unpopular. the white house basically says to favored constituencies you are not subject to it for now. is that constitutional? . no absolutely not. there are several provisions of obamacare that was supposed to
has issued executive orders than president george bush and bill clinton at there point in his presidency. how can you see an imperial presidency ignoring federal law? because the measure isn t how many executive orders but what substantive he has done. if he doesn t agree with a law, he won t enforce it. most strikingly, he s done that on obamacare. the text of the law says the employer mandate kicks in on january 1, 2014. contrary to law, president obama just granted a one-year extension to big business. he has no authority to do so, but he told big business, ignore that part of the law for a year. the text of the law says members of the congress should be on the harry reid and the senators didn t want to be on the exchanges and president obama granted them an exemption. and when over 5 million americans lost their health
that s how you get jobs. you have scathing op-ed in the wall street journal coming out tomorrow, the imperial presidency of barack obama is the title, in the nation s history there is no precedent for an american president knowingly ignoring federal law. if you look at the record of executive orders, this president has issued executive orders than president george bush and bill clinton at there point in his presidency. how can you see an imperial presidency ignoring federal law? because the measure isn t how many executive orders but what substantive he has done. if he doesn t agree with a law, he won t enforce it. most strikingly, he s done that on obamacare. the text of the law says the employer mandate kicks in on january 1, 2014. contrary to law, president obama just granted a one-year extension to big business. he has no authority to do so, but he told big business, ignore that part of the law for a year.
people losing their plans. half the states rejected it. the insurance commissioners have to approve. now you have a major carrier like aetna saying, no, we are not doing this. the president s fix is no fix. he didn t have the power to enforce it. they just did it again on friday. as you pointed out many times on the show, unless you pay you don t have insurance. on december 31, they extended the constitutiondeadline to the. a lot of people won t have care. sebelius said we are urging insurers to let them bay after december 31. we are urging them to accept partial down payments of the first month s premier yup, to let them keep their doctor even if not in the plan. they have no authority to enforce this. peel will lose their plan, doctor, insurance. they can do nothing about it. when we get to january 1, 2014, we are looking at a situation where this whole fix.
people losing their plans. half the states rejected it. the insurance commissioners have to approve. now you have a major carrier like aetna saying, no, we are not doing this. the president s fix is no fix. he didn t have the power to enforce it. they just did it again on friday. as you pointed out many times on the show, unless you pay you don t have insurance. on december 31, they extended the constitutiondeadline to the. a lot of people won t have care. sebelius said we are urging insurers to let them bay after december 31. we are urging them to accept partial down payments of the first month s premier yup, to let them keep their doctor even if not in the plan. they have no authority to enforce this. peel will lose their plan, doctor, insurance. they can do nothing about it. when we get to january 1, 2014, we are looking at a