December 16, 2023
Leftists And The ‘Imperial Presidency’
By Ted Noel
The Constitution created a chief executive who was supposed to have very few powers. His remit was foreign policy. Individual states weren’t allowed to deal directly with foreign powers, so that was left to the President. No police power exists in the Constitution, so disputes between the states would be dealt with by the Courts. The powers of the Congress were originally limited to a series of specific acts beginning with “To borrow money…” in Article I, Section 8. This didn’t leave a lot of room for a pen and a phone.
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court decided to ignore that original meaning in 1936, when it ruled in United States v. Butler that “general welfare” was a separate power. The net effect of that decision was that Congress was no longer limited in its spending. Literally everything was on the table, and it hasn’t yet been possible to put that genie back in the bottle. The Court whisked away James Madison’s original argument that the phrase “provide for the general welfare” simply explained how the list of enumerated powers should be understood.
FDR enjoyed that freedom in implementing his New Deal programs, including Social Security (which is neither). But perhaps the Greatest Leap Forward came with Barack Obama.
Obama asserted that because Congress wouldn’t do the things he wanted on immigration, he’d do his own thing. Montblanc to the rescue! DACA got dropped on America. Regrettably, since he was granting a benefit to illegal aliens, he wasn’t directly injuring any Americans.
more
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/12/leftists_and_the_imperial_presidency.html
