The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board has a long, consistent history of opposing overreach by presidents of both parties. When George W. Bush was in the Oval Office, we criticized his habit of appending “signing statements” to laws he signed that made clear there were parts of the laws he wouldn’t enforce. When Barack Obama succeeded Bush, we criticized Obama’s even more egregious habit of unilaterally rewriting portions of immigration law and two of the biggest bills passed this century by Congress — the No Child Left Behind education reform measure and the Affordable Care Act. In December 2016, when Obama issued far-reaching executive orders that sought to box in President-elect Donald Trump on major environmental issues, we warned that Obama’s overreach “could enable all kinds of unilateral actions by Trump.”
That’s just what America has witnessed. Trump has gone the farthest of any modern president in asserting executive power. Not only is he reportedly telling Border Patrol agents to ignore laws he doesn’t like, he’s diverting $6.6 billion from the Pentagon and the Treasury Department to build a border wall despite the constitutional provision that Congress must approve major appropriations. Federal judges have blocked more than 60 of the president’s sweeping orders, mainly because they ignore the 1946 federal law that requires that factual evidence must be presented to justify changing major government regulations. The main offense of several of the officials that Trump has pushed out of his administration appears to have been them telling the president that there are limits on his authority.
Yet to a stunning degree, Republicans accept Trump’s abuses of power. It’s time they realize that doing so could enable all kinds of unilateral actions by a future Democratic president. Some examples:
President Bernie Sanders might order audits of anyone who made more than $5 million a year but paid less than 10 percent in income taxes.
President Kamala Harris might refuse to spend money appropriated for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
President Elizabeth Warren might seek to withhold federal health-care funds from states with restrictive abortion laws.
President Amy Klobuchar might defund the National Instant Criminal Background Check System that licensed firearms dealers must use before selling handguns and rifles, blocking most new sales.
President Cory Booker might begin to enforce the Green New Deal’s goal of wiping out fossil fuels by canceling government permits that automakers and oil companies need to stay in business.
President Pete Buttigieg might divert money appropriated to the Pentagon to increase Obamacare subsidies as a step toward health care for all.
Just as Republicans have cheered for some of Trump’s executive orders for bypassing Congress and advancing conservative goals, many Democrats would cheer a president who used executive actions to take money from the very rich, increase abortion rights, limit apprehensions of unauthorized immigrants, block firearm sales, advance the climate-change fight and increase access to health care. Yet no American should welcome an ends-justify-the-means approach in which the checks and balances of the Constitution become collateral damage of the nation’s partisan wars.
Gridlock on big issues when power is split in Washington is nothing new. But the view that presidents can act alone to get around this gridlock is new. It’s an ominous abandonment of a crucial principle: The president is not above the law.
— The San Diego Union-Tribune