MESSAGE
| DATE | 2020-08-10 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] This is dangerous and it sucks... stretch
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Opinion | Trump’s Executive Orders
The Editorial Board
6-7 minutes
The good news is that President Trump on Saturday escaped the
trillion-dollar terms of surrender demanded by House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi. The bad news is that he followed the Barack Obama method with
executive orders, one of which stretches the law in a way that a future
progressive President will surely cite as a precedent.
Mr. Trump took his actions after talks with Mrs. Pelosi and her wing
man, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, broke down on Friday. The
President was right to walk away rather than succumb to their
multi-trillion-dollar blackmail.
They are demanding $800 billion in aid to the states, an extension of
$600 a week in jobless insurance into 2021 despite its disincentive to
work, and they refuse to budge on Covid-19 liability protection for
businesses and nonprofits. They want election mandates on states that
have nothing to do with the pandemic.
This is less a negotiation than a stick-up. The Democratic political
calculation has been that Mr. Trump would listen to Treasury Secretary
Steven Mnuchin and roll over again. This would let them impose much of
their long-term agenda, divide Republicans in Congress, and set the
table to make their welfare-state expansions permanent next year when
they expect to run Congress and the White House.
Mr. Trump’s escape frees him to lay out his own campaign policy agenda
for Covid-19 relief and reviving the economy. Credibility on the economy
is his best issue advantage over Joe Biden if Mr. Trump makes the case.
***
The President’s resort to executive orders is a separate issue, and it’s
worth considering all four in turn. The President’s deferral of payroll
taxes for Americans earning less than $104,000 a year through Dec. 31
poses no legal issues. Congress has already deferred the employer
portion, and under the law Mr. Trump can defer the 6.2% employee share.
The rub is that cancelling the tax requires an act of Congress, so the
deferred tax will have to be repaid. This makes the tax cut a limited
economic stimulus because employers and employees aren’t likely to
change their behavior if they know the tax must be repaid in 2021. At
most it means more money in workers’ pockets for four months. But Mr.
Trump said he’ll offer legislation to cancel the repayment if he wins
re-election, which now becomes part of the campaign debate. Will Mr.
Biden promise to raise this tax on middle-class workers next year?
The Democratic complaint that this jeopardizes Social Security and
Medicare is dishonest. Democrats supported the payroll tax holiday when
Mr. Obama did it and Mrs. Pelosi praised it at the time. Mr. Biden wants
to expand Medicare to anyone at age 60 instead of 65, which would
bankrupt the program without benefit cuts or huge tax increases.
The executive orders extending relief on rental and homeowner evictions
and interest on student loans are modest and also within the law. The
eviction order is essentially a command for agencies to “consider” what
can be done. The loan-relief order is within Congress’s grant of
authority. It is only for three additional months through the end of the
year for debt held by the Department of Education.
Mr. Trump’s worst order would redeploy up to $44 billion from the
Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Disaster Relief Fund to
finance extra jobless benefits by $300 a week (plus $100 a week if
states choose to match it with previous relief money).
Covid-19 is a national emergency, and unemployment is the result of the
virus and government shutdowns. But Congress passed jobless aid as part
of the Cares Act that was separate from the Disaster Relief Fund. Mr.
Trump is commandeering the power of the purse that the Constitution
reserves for Congress.
Yes, Mr. Obama did it first. He paid health insurers cost-sharing
subsidies under ObamaCare without an appropriation from Congress. More
famously, as part of his “pen” and “phone” strategy, he used executive
diktats to provide work permits for millions of undocumented aliens.
Democrats and the media cheered these abuses, and Mrs. Pelosi’s charge
now that Mr. Trump’s orders are “absurdly unconstitutional” is partisan
hypocrisy.
Mr. Trump’s FEMA order may survive because no states are commandeered
nor individuals harmed, and it lasts only through Dec. 6 or until the
money runs out. The House would have standing to sue, but Mrs. Pelosi
might not like the political look of suing to deny Americans extended
jobless benefits.
These columns opposed Mr. Obama’s orders, and one constitutional abuse
doesn’t justify another. Mr. Trump’s FEMA order is a bad legal precedent
that a President Kamala Harris could cite if a GOP Congress blocked her
agenda on, say, climate change.
All of this shows how our polarized politics is stressing the
constitutional system. Democrats and the press blame Mr. Trump, but they
are as culpable for enabling Mr. Obama’s executive end-runs around
Congress. Congress and the President should work it out the
constitutional way, but if they can’t, the voters will have to settle
the debate.
WSJ Opinion: Is New York's Mail Voting Fiasco a Harbinger of November?
--
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
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