http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/can-gop-stop-obamas-year-of-action-sequel/article/2557976Can GOP stop Obama's 'Year of Action' sequel?
By Byron York | December 29, 2014 | 6:11 pm
Give Barack Obama credit for keeping his promise. "This is going to be a year of action," the president pledged last January. And indeed, with a series of unilateral executive actions in the last few months of the year, he made it so.
Now, as a new year arrives, the job for the new Republican majority on Capitol Hill is to keep Obama in check as he strives to bypass lawmakers and make 2015 another year of (unilateral) action.
Obama's original promise was entirely understandable. He entered 2013 fresh from a solid re-election victory, determined to score legislative wins on gun control, immigration, spending, and other knotty issues. It all ended in disappointment. As 2014 dawned, Obama promised — to Republicans, threatened — to take a new path.
He did, by using executive fiat to confer quasi-legal status on millions of illegal immigrants, to reshape relations with Cuba, and to make a climate deal with China, among other actions. As 2015 arrives, Obama and his Democratic supporters are drawing one key lesson from the experience: take executive action, make it broad and far-reaching, and do it sooner rather than later.
For example, Obama famously delayed his immigration action until after the midterm elections. The Democratic candidates he sought to protect lost anyway. Some of the president's supporters argue that putting the action off actually made things worse by discouraging Hispanic support at the polls. Don't look for Obama to opt for delay again.
In a new interview with National Public Radio, the president denied that he feels "liberated" by the election, in the sense that he can now do what he wants without worrying about shielding House and Senate Democrats from political damage. But he made it pretty clear that, liberated or not, he is going to take executive action and, at the same time, do his best to stymie Republican initiatives.
"I haven't used the veto pen very often since I've been in office," Obama told NPR. "Now, I suspect there are going to be some times where I've got to pull that pen out. And I'm going to defend gains that we've made in healthcare; I'm going to defend gains that we've made on the environment and clean air and clean water."
Indeed, the standard for overriding a presidential veto — a two-thirds vote in House and Senate — could become the only limit Obama observes in the next couple of years. For example, Obama takes executive action X. Republican lawmakers, along with some moderate Democrats, oppose X. They pass a bill repealing X with a 60-vote, filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Obama vetoes the bill, preserving his executive action. At that point, opponents would have to muster 67 votes to override the veto. That's a very, very tough hill to climb. As long as Obama can get 34 Democrats to support him in the Senate, his executive action will stand.
Another way of putting it is that Obama will be able to do anything at least 34 Senate Democrats will let him get away with.
The president might put that standard to a very tough test over the issue of terrorist detainees at Guantanamo Bay. For years now, large bipartisan majorities of Congress have voted to forbid Obama from transferring any Gitmo inmates to the United States, or even to prepare a place for them here.
Now the president appears to be readying a plan by which he will release dozens of prisoners to other countries, reducing the population of Guantanamo to perhaps 50 or 60 hard-core cases. Then he will say to Congress: It's just too expensive to keep Gitmo open for such a small number of inmates. Let's transfer them to a supermax prison in the United States.
Congress undoubtedly will reject Obama's proposal. And then what? Will Obama feel emboldened enough to go around Congress and dare lawmakers to do something about it? Would 34 Democrats go along with him? The resulting fight could become a template for Obama's remaining time in office.
In his NPR interview, the president looked back on his unilateral actions of the past year and promised more. "I said at the beginning of this year that 2014 would be a breakthrough year," Obama said. "And it was a bumpy path."
With Republicans now in control of House and Senate, and Obama determined to push his executive authority to its limit and beyond, the bumps could be just beginning.
