http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-on-the-right/013014-688294-obama-is-who-the-founders-warned-us-about.htm?p=fullObama Is The President The Founders Warned Us About
By LEWIS K. UHLER AND PETER FERRARA
Posted 06:19 PM ET
Hype is natural to Super Bowl and State of the Union warm-ups. But neither Super Bowl contender seeks to change the rules of the game to improve their odds.
Enter Obama. With the ObamaCare albatross threatening to take Democrats down to defeat, President Obama seeks a game-changer: keeping his opposition (Congress) off the playing field so he faces no defense — checks and balances — to stop his illegal plays and unconstitutional face-masking.
He'll "go it alone," "assert a unilateral agenda," "tackle public policy issues without congressional action," screamed the headlines and the pundits before the State of the Union. Obama himself said, "I've got a pen, and I've got a phone. And that's all I need."
The Founders must be turning in their graves. If they thought a dictator with unbridled and unilateral authority was needed, they wouldn't have shackled the president with the "horizontal" checks and balances of Congress and the courts, or the "perpendicular" restraint of limited and delegated authority to the federal government, leaving all other powers to the states and the people (10th Amendment).
We are told Obama was a law professor but, clearly, he flunked constitutional law. As president he is to faithfully execute the laws, not make them.
Equally threatening and damaging to our economy, our nation and our pocketbooks is the failed, worn-out playbook from which Obama is "calling" the plays for America. Whenever tried in the past, America has been thrown for a loss because these outdated "plays" involve theoretical, mythological, "feel good" formations that lack blocking and tackling fundamentals that are proven to move the ball down the "economic growth" field:
• Minimum-wage increase: Few who work at minimum wage support a family. They are kids or others who "contribute" to a family's total income. Increase the wage artificially by law to more than $10 an hour and you knock a lot of young people out of jobs and helping the family.
• Unemployment benefit extensions: Even Larry Summers, Obama's former economic policy chief, has said such extensions merely encourage people to remain out of the workforce and refuse jobs. Enough unemployment "insurance" is enough.
• Head Start: Preschool "feels good" but provides no discernible difference in kids after three years — and it costs dearly.
Obama once again gave lip service in his SOTU to an idea that would help restore traditional, booming, American economic growth — corporate tax reform. He said:
"Both Democrats and Republicans have argued that our tax code is riddled with wasteful, complicated loopholes that punish businesses investing here, and reward companies that keep profits abroad . .. Let's work together to close those loopholes, end those incentives to ship jobs overseas, and lower tax rates for businesses that create jobs here at home."
No sooner had Obama called the right play than he spiked the ball, calling for a net tax increase to finance spending on "infrastructure."
The Democrat Congress in 2009 gave Obama hundreds of billions for this in the so-called "stimulus" bill, and all that stimulated was government spending, deficits and debt.
Congress is already preparing to spend hundreds of billions more on such infrastructure this year.
During their hundred years' war on our Constitution, progressives have sought to change it without formal amendments — through the proliferation of rule-making (law), presidentially controlled administrative agencies such as EPA, Interior, Agriculture and other department boards and commissions. Congress must cancel these delegations of lawmaking so it can again faithfully fulfill its constitutional responsibilities.
That can be accomplished by the Democrat Senate passing the Regulations of the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act, passed already by the GOP House. That bill would require congressional approval of any regulation costing the economy more than $100 million a year.
That long pass would help get the economic ball into the end zone of restored U.S. prosperity and growth. But Obama has punted on this issue.
When Congressional Democrats join Republicans in running these pro-growth plays — and the president completes the pass by signing the bills into law, the American people will have won the Super Bowl of constitutional restoration ... and all of us may claim Super Bowl rings!
• Uhler is founder and president of the National Tax Limitation Foundation.• Ferrara serves as senior adviser at NTLF, as well as senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis and at the Heartland Institute.
