This could be a rather heated winter. All three branches of government are on course to collide over partisan politics, constitutional authority and scope of power, particularly as vested in the executive branch.
This could be a rather heated winter. All three branches of government are on course to collide over partisan politics, constitutional authority and scope of power, particularly as vested in the executive branch.
President Barack Obama has wasted no time moving beyond the Democrats’ midterm defeats. He is setting about ensuring his legacy. His advisers say he feels liberated by not having to worry about any more congressional elections.
He has secured a historic climate change agreement with China that John Boehner called part of the president’s “job-crushing policies” and his “crusade against affordable, reliable energy.”
The president went further Saturday, signaling that he will soon announce “that the United States will contribute $3 billion to a new international fund intended to help the world’s poorest countries address the effects of climate change,” according to The New York Times.
Obama has also called on the Federal Communications Commission to adopt net-neutrality rules that Ted Cruz called “Obamacare for the Internet.”
But the tipping point will likely come when the president takes executive actions on immigration, which, according to reports, could protect up to 5 million unauthorized immigrants from deportation. Republicans are beside themselves at the prospect.
Amnesty! Out-and-out lawlessness! Shredding the Constitution! No claim — and no recourse — is out of bounds, it seems.
Many conservatives, like Rush Limbaugh, are demanding another government shutdown to stop it. Others, like Charles Krauthammer, have suggested that Obama’s actions on immigration might be “an impeachable offense.
The grown-ups on the right — to the degree such people exist — know full well that shutdowns and impeachment proceedings are suicidal, but such is the political blood lust on that end of the spectrum that one can’t be sure that cooler heads will prevail over hot ones.
Short of those two nearly nuclear options, John Boehner is reportedly considering suing the president over his planned action on immigration.
This is what the GOP base wants: a fight. According to last week’s report from the Pew Research Center, Republicans, by a margin of more than 2 to 1, want Republicans leaders to “stand up to Obama, even if less gets done in Washington,” as if it were possible for this do-nothing Congress to do less.
Congressional Republicans have been sent to Washington with a mandate not so much to conduct business but rather to collect a bounty, to do as they promised and what their supporters expect: Stop Obama at any cost and at every turn, to erase his name or at least put an asterisk by it.
If the speaker should file such a suit, it could drag the Supreme Court into this partisan drama.
But it seems the court isn’t waiting for that. It has already thrust itself into the partisan fray by, to the surprise of many, taking up yet another challenge to the Affordable Care Act. This one, like the last, could prove fatal to the law.
It centers on the question of whether people who signed up through the federal exchanges are eligible for subsidies or if those subsidies are only available to people signing up through exchanges set up by states, something many Republican-led states refused to do.
Some have called this ambiguity little more than a typo in a voluminous bill. Linda Greenhouse, my Times colleague and expert interpreter of all things Supreme Court, called the decision to take the case “worse” than the court’s ruling on Bush v. Gore, as well as “profoundly depressing,” and suggested that the court is beginning to look evermore like “just a collection of politicians in robes.”
But the typo defense is complicated by the comments of an architect of the law, Jonathan Gruber, a health economist. In 2012, he said, “if you’re a state and you don’t set up an exchange, that means your citizens don’t get their tax credits.” This suggested that the clause was no accident, or at least one he and others found fortuitous.
While these battles may offer some ephemeral partisan gain — mostly for Republicans — they will suppress support for all three branches of government and further diminish public faith in the efficacy of government as a whole.
According to a June poll by Gallup, “Americans’ confidence in all three branches of the U.S. government has fallen, reaching record lows for the Supreme Court (30 percent) and Congress (7 percent), and a six-year low for the presidency (29 percent).”While the blood sport of these clashes is likely to enthrall pundits and policy wonks, I fear that it won’t be good for the republic – particularly Democrats.
Liberal ideology depends on a productive federal government; conservatism rises when that government is crippled.
Republicans, in all their cynicism, are increasing their efforts to break the government.
Isn’t America great?