Transcripts For CSPAN Washington This Week 20140203 : compar

Orders. I want to point out most of that is about in the timing of implementation of parts of the Affordable Care act. I think it bears are act or refusing to enforce its. This is most important compliment. He has been phasing it in and is made decisions along the way to certain pieces of it and they need to meet be delayed by more than one year. This is exactly what presence and administrations have always done and are expected to do in implementing complicated pieces of legislation like the Affordable Care act. George w. Bushs secretary of health and Human Services said three days after one of the most important delays of the so called employer mandate was announced, this decision was wise. He compared it to decisions that he and president bush made when their implementing the Prescription Drug benefit in medicare which many of us are personally familiar with now. Complicatedery piece of health legislation. It also had a very bumpy introduction was not very popular. They have a lot of problems that they had not anticipated. They took their time and implemented it sensibly and now its a very successful and popular program. Thats what the president is doing and it is the very definition of taking care to see that the laws are faithfully executed. I think my friend rogers beef is not with the fact that the president is rewriting the law, his beef is with the law as it has been defined for about the last 75 years. I respect that. He has sincere and well thought through views. The problem in his view is not about violating the law. The problem with the law has given the president and congress to much authority in his view. We are discussing and debating the president use of executive orders and executive powers in response to what the president said tuesday night. Speaker of the house john boehner said after five years, the president is clearly out of ideas. Few bipartisan proposals. Americans heard an american more interested in advancing ideology than in advancing ideology than solving the problems regular folks are talking about. Guest there is no question that this president , more than any other recent president , has gone about his business in a kind of confrontational, inyourface way that has raised serious questions about the kind of understanding he has of the constitution which is striking given that he was an instructor in constitutional law at the university of chicago, my on the monitor. My alma mater. What we are seeing here is a statute that is very unpopular and si is right, my beef is with the statute itself but it is also with the way the president is going about implementing this. Letsw was written so now enforcement is the normal approach to these matters. Of course, the law was so poorly written, so poorly thought out, that there is no way to enforce it is written. What he is doing, in so many ways, is rewriting it. For example, he is having the administration impose this contraceptive mandate which has led to the suit by the Little Sisters of the poor. He has instituted delays. He has put certain penalties off for a while. Hocs simply it is ad and this is what has so many people up in arms because they cannot plan their own lives. Businesses and individuals have to plan for their own insurance, their health care, and yet it changes day by day. This is the kind of thing that has led to the extraordinary unpopularity of this bill and in particular the way it has gone about thing implemented by this president and his administration. Up on let me follow specific examples of where the president has used his powers lets get to your phone calls on this issue. Democrats won, good morning. Caller good morning. I think this question is ridiculous. Likethink what it would be if the president did not have this executive order. Congress is not doing their job and if this president did not have this executive power, where with the people they . If this had not been brought up this was not brought up with other president s. What is happening here . Are they trying to cripple him from helping the people . Evennk its ridiculous talking about this, thank you. Host thanks for the call. Guest i think i probably should say nothing because the caller said everything i would want to say better than i could say it. That the stress lighting that delaying pieces of the Affordable Care act to make sure that they get implemented more smoothly and in a way that the people who are regulated by the active people who benefit from it will be able to handle these responsibilities and these benefits in a sensible and effective fashion, that is ed andtely precedent right in the middle of the president s constitutional job description. Its what all president s have done with complicated pieces of legislation like this and thats exactly what he should do as the caller pointed out. I would also add that this is how the framers designed the constitution. That,reated a legislative the judicial branch, and an executive branch and of those three, the only one branch that is always open for business is the presidency and the executive branch. Rely on ato legislative branch and the branchent alone, along, half the times when things go wrong or come up, the u. S. Government would be completely impotent. What the situation was before the constitution was written and it was what the framers were most interested in avoiding. They wanted to have an effective federal government that could that almosttnesses caused the United States to lose the revolutionary war and they particularly wanted an executive branch which had with they called energy. They repeated that over and over again. The energy to be a strong government. Guest i think bills question was directed at me when he asked where we would be if the president did not assume this power that is not given to him. We would be living under the constitution is where we would be. The constitution simply sets forth a set of rules for the conduct of government. The president will not always get his way or his policies implemented if we followed those rules. Bill complained about the congress doing nothing. Thats the kind of gridlock that was built into the constitution by madison when he established three branches of government and pitted power against power. The fact just to give an example of the recess appointment power the congress had come in the case of those three were appointees, refused to affirm them. What did the president do . He went one step further than any previous president had done. Officeointed those two when the senate was arguably in session. Of course, that led to litigation, the noel guest the actions that the president has taken, these have all been well within his authority that has been granted by congress. That is true mold these cases. Lets take the immigration example. That is one of the examples and opponents of the president frequently site. What the president did 1. 5 years that certaine children of undocumented immigrants who had gone to school and served in the military would not be targets for deportation. This is a perfectly sensible thing to have done. To say that the president was not enforcing the immigration laws is ridiculous. Hasrate of deportations increased almost four times under obama over previous administrations. Not coincidence all. Congress had only appropriate enough money to cover the number of deportations annually that are now being put into effect. Who said many people the executive branch did not have the resources to undertake deportation proceedings. To exempt people who are clearly beneficial to our society and are not threats to the Public Welfare from deportation and since they were not going to be deported anyway because the government did not have the resources to do it was a perfectly sensible thing to do. AgoSupreme Court 1. 5 years in discussing the president s authority under the immigration laws in a decision that chief Justice Roberts and she Justice Kennedy joined said very clearly that the decision to undertake deportation proceedings is at the core of the president s authority to enforce the immigration laws and they specifically said that humanitarian concerns are part of what the president can take into account and specifically targetat deciding not to people who are gainfully employed, for example, rather lons is a sensible way to use that Discretionary Authority because people who are gainfully employed or students in school or who have served in the military are, again, not threats to welfare here. The view on what the president did administratively in that decision, the view that has been expressed by opponents of the president that this is somehow usurping Congressional Authority and violating the constitution is directly contrary that is a cramped view that is directly contrary to what the Supreme Court has only recently reaffirmed in a very bipartisan position. Host we welcome our listeners on cspan radio. We are focusing on the president ial use of executive powers. Joining us for our discussion is kison. Azarus and roger pilon. To janes in peoria, illinois, independent line. Caller good morning, i am so sick and tired of hearing how president obama is the worst president in the world. First of all, president obama would not have to use executive power if congress was doing their job. They are not. You sit up and you talk about how bad this president is. It was not a problem when george was george bush was lying to the people and got us into two wars we did not need. That was ok. President obama is trying to get us out of the war and get us out of the next four. Host take your point of view and frame it in terms of a question and we will get a response. I would is it like a truthful answer that when president obama uses executive power, its a bad thing when it was not a bad thing with other president s . He has not done anything beyond the constitution. Respectes, well, with to congress not doing their job, it all depends on what you understand the job that congress is supposed to be doing is. Congress simply to not pass a statute that the president wants past is not the case of congress not doing its job. It is a case of congress disagreeing with the president s policy. Thiss exactly the way system was meant to work. You have to have all three wrenches of government on board all three branches of government on board to a copper something. You have to have the Congress Passed the statute, you got to have the president sign it, and you got to have the court find that the statute is constitutional. If you have accomplish all of that, then the government will be doing the job that initiated and began in the congress. What weve got with this president is a failure of leadership. You talk to the republicans in the house and you find that, for several years, he hardly had anything to do with them. Care act,e affordable obamacare, was passed without a single vote from the republicans in either the house or the senate. That is not bipartisanship. That is partisanship with a vengeance and that is part of the reason why the bill is so unpopular together with the way it has been implemented and with the bill itself which increasingly is being seen as a massive intrusion into the private affairs of individuals in this most intimate area of their life, namely their health care. Host calling it the recess appointment rent, this is one of the many essays you can check out from the cato website. We will go to bob from philadelphia, republican line, good morning. Caller good morning and thank you for cspan and taking my call. I wanted to thank cspan for having this forum on this debate. Quite frankly, you would not see it anyplace else. The press is so liberal that the point should be made that if a conservative or republican president stood there in front of congress and essentially threatened and cajoled them, there they would be demonized. People would be standing on rooftops screaming about what an imperial president. This guy somehow gets a free ride. Thank you for the debate and thank you for the form. It would not be seen or heard elsewhere. Host thank you. There is also this tweet guest thank you very much and thanks to both callers. On the question of whether the congress is doing his job, i would like to address that. Lets look at the socalled recess appointment issue. It is a little bit arcane for most people. Requires Senate Confirmation for a highlevel executive branch but it has a safety valve, a clause which senate is inn the recess and therefore not available to decide whether to confirm or not confirm, the president can make a temporary appointment to make sure that the job is filled. The question right now is whether the president appropriately use that power to add three people, three commissioners to the National Labor Relations Board a while back. Thatwas going on there is the minority in the senate, not a majority but the republican minority at the behest of their Business Community allies had decided to completely shut the labor board down by refusing to confirm three members for three slots not because they had objections to the individuals but because they literally wanted to shut the labor board down. The labor board only had two of its five slots filled in the Supreme Court had decided that it needed a quorum of at least three to act. By refusing to consider these nominees, the Senate Republicans filibustering is not that they had a majority even the senate the republicans were able to completely keep the president and his administration from faithfully executing all the laws that protect workers and the right to organize in unions that the National Labor Relations Board and forces. And forces. Enforces. It was never seen that the power to confirm or not confirm would literally eliminate repeal large chunks of laws or shut down cetaceans. Expected theut confirmation authority would be exercised only very rarely and only because of problems that the senate had with particular individuals. I think the congress here was absolutely violating its own Constitutional Responsibilities and the president , in exercising his recess Appointment Authority to make sure the labor board could actually function, was doing just what the framers expected and wanted the executive branch to do as a means of selfdefense, a word they used in the federalist papers. They foresaw this kind of political fighting between the two branches and that was very important that the executive branch specifically would have the ability to resist encroachments from the legislative ranch and preserve the executive branch is vital authority to see that the laws are faithfully executed. I want to point their audiences attention to this from Jeffrey Anderson in the weekly standard. Guest absolutely, that is probably the most important of all the members of the federalist. Numbers of the federalist for the point you just made can be brought to bear on whatsi has said. To make sure that one branch does not intrude on the powers with respect sy, to this recess appointment issue, has pointed to the reasons why the minority did not approve these members of the National Labor Relations Board. That is not the issue, ultimately. The issue is whether they have the power to refuse to confirm these nominees. The alternative issue is does the president have the tower given that refusal to confirm, to appoint them himself . I submit that he does not. The president has the power to fill up vacancies that happened when the senate is not in session. These vacancies did not happen when the senate was not in session. Moreover, the appointments were made when the senate was in session. Its a double violation on the part of the president. That is what has got so many people up in arms. With respect to the tweet you got a moment ago, and brought to our attention, this person is making the point that the two previous callers have made, namely, that the president is acting because the congress is not acting. The fact that congress is not acting does not give the president power to act. The president s power as a function of what the constitution says, not a function of whether congress does or does not act in a given area. Simon rogerpilon and lazarus. Your is more of what the speaker of the house this past week said as he reacted to the president s announcement that if Congress Fails to act, he will. [video clip] we will continue to look closely at whether the president is faithfully executing the laws. He took an oath to do this. Dealing with federal contracts and the minimum wage, he probably has the authority to do that but we will watch very closely. There is a constitution that we all take an oath to including him. Following that constitution is the basis for our republic and we should not put them in jeopardy. Host will go to richard joining us from pawtucket, rhode island. Caller good morning. Thank you for taking my call. All in all, i think what the president said was pretty blurred was pretty belligerent to congress. I think what he did was pretty successful in the way that he was able to derail the public from having to the main topic of the things that are concerning americans the most right now which is the economy. Within your viewpoint, i would like to know if he was successful in doing that. Thank you. Guest i would like to respond. First of all, i would like to point out that Speaker Boehner, very responsibly and the only specific points he made in his statement that was just on, he specifically said that the two important actions that the president had actually announced in his speech, namely requiring federal contractors to pay a minimum wage of slightly over new irahour and the accounts for lower income people Speaker Boehner said those that theere lawful and congress would continue to watch and make sure the other actions are lawful. Thats what congress should do. I want to point out that Speaker Boehner, unlike many of his allies on the right, is at least shootin