By Rich Lowry
Friday, January 29, 2021
President Joe Biden has proved that, if nothing else, he
has a pen and a phone.
According to The
Economist, he signed more executive orders in his first two days than
President Donald Trump signed in nearly his first two months.
And he was just getting started.
Republicans have no standing to complain about Biden’s
spate of unilateral measures, given they were fine with Trump using exactly the
same means. But that presidents of both parties govern this way doesn’t make it
better — it makes it worse.
Some executive actions starkly usurp congressional
authority, while others are firmly within the executive’s ambit. Yet the sheer
amount of activity that presidents undertake on their own isn’t in keeping with
the spirit of our constitutional system.
The presidency has overawed a legislative branch that is
only too willing to sign over power and responsibility. Congress has been an
eager participant in its own neutering.
James Madison thought the legislature would be
insatiable, steadily accumulating power. Instead, it is the least
self-respecting branch, led by people who identify with the interests of
presidents and their own parties over and above the interests of their own
institution.
This means that Congress is essentially cut out of the
action on important questions of national policy.
Obama blocked the Keystone XL pipeline, Trump blessed it,
and Biden blocked it again.
Obama took us into the Paris climate accord, Trump took
us out, and Biden is taking us back in.
Consider what Biden did on his own the other day. He
directed the Interior Department to stop new oil and gas leases on federal land
and to identify steps to double renewable-energy production by 2030.
He created a special presidential envoy for climate, as
well as a White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy, a National Climate
Task Force, a Civilian Climate Corps Initiative, an Interagency Working Group
on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization, a White House
Environmental Justice Interagency Council, and a White House Environmental
Justice Advisory Council.
On top of this, he established a Justice Initiative to
steer 40 percent of relevant federal investments to disadvantaged communities.
And on the seventh day, Biden rested (after tucking his
pen back in his pocket).
If Congress had passed a bill doing all this, it’d be
considered a pretty active day. Instead, Congress stood on the sidelines . . .
and commented.
“I’m proud that President Biden is announcing a slew of
executive actions on climate,” Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer tweeted.
Schumer’s only complaint is that Biden isn’t doing more
on his own authority.
This is the same Chuck Schumer who has been a legislator
since 1975 when he took a seat in the New York State Assembly, who has been in
Congress since 1981 and the Senate since 1999, and who ascended to majority
leader about a week ago, representing the apex of a national legislative
career.
And yet Schumer has urged Biden to declare a national
climate emergency because it would allow him to do things “without
legislation.”
This would be like Chief Justice John Roberts giving
Biden advice on how to pack the Supreme Court — except it’s unimaginable that a
Supreme Court justice would be so openly disdainful of the legitimacy and
prerogatives of his or her own institution.
This is a particular congressional disease. As Yuval
Levin of the American Enterprise Institute wrote in an essay for Commentary magazine, Congress has been
delegating its authority to the executive branch for some time. What’s new is that
partisanship has created a loyalty for members of Congress that transcends
their attachment to Congress itself, while more and more members consider their
office merely a platform to get attention.
“Congress is weak and dysfunctional because that suits
its members,” Levin writes. “It could renew itself only if its members wanted
such renewal.”
All indications are that, no, it is perfectly content to be supplanted by the pen and phone.
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