The Great Destroyer

Obama and his allies have repeatedly broadcast their intentions in this regard. His former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, promised that Obama would govern through “executive orders and directives to get the job done across a front of issues.”¹ Obama told NBC News anchor Brian Williams in August 2010 that his “next two years” as president would be much more about “implementation” and “management” than “constant legislation.”² “What I’m not gonna do is wait for Congress,” he baldly proclaimed in an interview on 60 Minutes.³ And in January 2012, frustrated with a GOP Congress that properly refused to rubber-stamp his destructive agenda, he said, “But when Congress refuses to act, and as a result, hurts our economy and puts our people at risk, then I have an obligation as President to do what I can without them. I’ve got an obligation to act on behalf of the American people. And I’m not going to stand by while a minority in the Senate puts party ideology ahead of the people that we were elected to serve.”⁴

Obama implements his power-grabs through administrative usurpations of legislative power, executive overreaches, and unconstitutional legislation, assisted by the many radical, unaccountable czars he has appointed. In his failed jobs bill (the “American Jobs Act”), he sought to create a new group of czars (the American Infrastructure Financing Authority) to manage more than a trillion dollars of taxpayer money for infrastructure improvements—authority that already resides with the Department of Transportation, the Department of Energy, and the U.S. General Services Administration.⁵ Columnist Lurita Doan notes that the White House has also assembled an expansive new cadre of unaccountable White House liaison officers who “seem to be the critical players in so many of the scandals now erupting.” Working under the authority of Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, these officers are largely “unqualified and inexperienced” and are “embedded into every single federal agency.” Obama reportedly didn’t have contact with a half dozen cabinet members during his first two years in office,⁶ he rarely meets with his real, Senate-confirmed cabinet members, and increasingly relies on his czars and junior staffers who insulate him from contact with the public.⁷

Conservatives have been exercised over ObamaCare, but Obama’s Dodd-Frank financial bill is arguably every bit as illegitimate. The bill created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), to be headed by a five-year presidential appointee whose power, according to one legal expert, would be “so significant it may be unconstitutional.” “I am not familiar with an institution that gives so much power to one person,” says Todd Zywicki, a law professor at George Mason University. This person, Zywicki explains, does not even have to consult Congress on the agency’s budget, which every other agency is required to do. He just has to submit his budget to the Federal Reserve, and as long as it is less than 12 percent of the Fed’s revenue, it will be approved. “Basically,” notes Zywicki, “this director can do whatever he or she wants with only limited review.”⁸

Obama didn’t want to wait on the Senate to confirm his appointee to run the CFPB, so he carved out a “special advisory role” at the bureau and appointed the anti-capitalist Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren to lead a team of thirty to forty people at the Department of Treasury.⁹ “This legalistic gambit serves as a fig leaf for a very different reality: Mr. Geithner will never reject any of Ms. Warren’s ‘advice,’” observes Yale Professor Bruce Ackerman. “The simple truth is that the Treasury secretary is being transformed into a rubber stamp for a White House staffer.”¹⁰

Once Warren had served her purposes, Obama nominated former Ohio attorney general Richard Cordray to head the CFPB, because he had established a record in his state as a fierce opponent of banks’ mortgage foreclosure practices.¹¹ Obama circumvented the Senate’s refusal to confirm Cordray through his recess appointments power, taking the unprecedented step of exercising it when the Senate was technically still in session.¹²

GOP opposition to Cordray was based more on the outrageous power he would acquire under the statute than on any particular objections to Cordray himself. Under the act, the Federal Reserve, rather than Congress or the Treasury Department, will control the CFPB’s funding and budget, thus diminishing its accountability. In December 2011, forty-five senators sent a letter to President Obama objecting to the enormous power Cordray would have as head of the CFPB. “The Director of the CFPB, by design, is set to lead one of the least accountable and most powerful agencies in Washington,” Senator Mitch McConnell declared on the Senate floor. “What we’re saying is no single person who’s unaccountable to the American people should have that much power. We are asking for the same structure as the SEC, the CFTC, and the FDIC, the FTC, the NLRB, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission—the same structure we use anytime we give unelected bureaucrats new powers that need to be checked to protect against abuse . . . . We don’t need any more unelected, unaccountable czars in Washington.”¹³

Democrats masterminded the Dodd-Frank bill under the pretense that it would prevent future financial crises such as we experienced in 2008, but as explained in Crimes Against Liberty, it will likely cause more problems than it solves. C. Boyden Gray, White House counsel for the George H. W. Bush administration, in December 2010 wrote that the bill “create[s] a structure of almost unlimited, unreviewable and sometimes secret bureaucratic discretion, with no constraints on concentration—a breakdown of the separation of powers, which were created to guard against the exercise of arbitrary authority.”¹⁴

Under the act, the Treasury can petition federal district courts to seize banks that receive government support and non-bank financial institutions the government believes could pose a risk to national financial stability—those “too big to fail.” If the entity refuses to comply, the court will decide, sometimes in secret, whether to proceed with receivership. The court, noted Gray, “can eliminate all judicial review simply by doing nothing for 24 hours, after which the petition is granted automatically and liquidation proceeds.... This means the U.S. Treasury and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. are acting as sometimes secret legislative appropriator, executive and judiciary all in one.”¹⁵

As for the bill’s constitutionality, Gray said, “It is hard to believe that the Supreme Court would not throw out parts of this scheme as violations of either the Article III judicial powers, due process or even the First Amendment, assuming the justices do not find all of it a violation of the basic constitutional structure.” Furthermore, the CFPB and the Financial Stability Oversight Council are also vulnerable to constitutional attack.¹⁶

More recently, others have begun drawing attention to the threat of Dodd-Frank. In April 2012, Peter J. Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute echoed and expanded on Gray’s concerns. After detailing the act’s multitudinous defects, he asked, “Does this sound like America? How can this have happened without most people knowing about it? The answer is found in Rahm Emanuel’s iconic remark, ‘You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.’” Dodd-Frank, Wallison says, was hatched in that crisis atmosphere and rushed through Congress with almost no Republican votes. “It is every bit the ideological sibling of Obamacare,” he says, “and if it survives will have as profound an effect on the future of the U.S. financial system as Obamacare will have on health care.”¹⁷

But Obama is quite proud of Dodd-Frank. While denouncing banks for charging debit card fees, he said, “You don’t have some inherent right just to get a certain amount of profit if your customers are being mistreated.... This is exactly why we need this [CFPB]. We need somebody whose sole job is to prevent stuff like this.”¹⁸ Indeed, Dodd-Frank and ObamaCare typify Obama’s America: extraordinary power is granted to small groups, bureaus, agencies, and entities to make crucial decisions about the most important aspects of our lives, from our personal health to our finances—in secret and with little accountability—and through structures and processes wholly inimical to our Constitution and our republican form of government.

Sometimes, instead of allocating power to unaccountable agencies and individuals, Obama simply circumvents the law altogether. In chapter seven, we’ll see how his renegade Department of Interior wholly defied a federal court order invalidating his ban on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. But that is hardly an isolated case. When a federal judge struck down Obama’s executive order forcing taxpayers to fund embryonic stem cell research, the administration didn’t just appeal the decision; the National Institutes of Health, while saying new grants would be temporarily discontinued, issued guidelines for researchers who had already received such funding, suggesting they could essentially disregard the court’s ruling.¹⁹

Similarly, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar took advantage of a lame duck session of Congress to announce he had directed the Bureau of Land Management to survey its holdings with the goal of designating millions of acres of public land wilderness areas off-limits to development. Outraged, Republican Congressman Don Young responded, “The extreme environmentalist groups couldn’t get their wilderness bill past Congress and so now they are circumventing this country’s legislative body and having the agencies do their dirty work.”²⁰

On her website, columnist and blogger Michelle Malkin regularly chronicles the administration’s ongoing “stealth land grabs.” In one post she describes the administration’s “‘Great Outdoors Initiative’ to lock up more open spaces through executive order,” a program that complements a “separate, property-usurping initiative” whereby “17 energy-rich areas in 11 states” have been selected as sites for possible federal “monuments.” Malkin also writes about Salazar’s elevation of the National Landscape Conservation System (NLCS)—some 27 million acres of wilderness, conservation areas, rivers, and monuments—to a “directorate” within the Bureau of Land Management to manage the lands and protect their values, meaning to safeguard them from evil energy producing activities. The Interior Department inspector general, according to Malkin, has singled out the NLCS for illegal lobbying and coordination with environmental groups that oppose human use of these public lands.²¹ In sum, it appears enviro-liberal groups have been acting in concert with the administration to turn federal lands—the federal government owns approximately a third of the land in the United States—into a radical environmentalist project.

Obama made good on his promise to sidestep Congress via executive fiat in his immigration policy as well. For example, the director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued an immigration enforcement memo directing ICE agents, attorneys, and directors to exercise “prosecutorial discretion,” which meant to ease up on deportation actions for illegal aliens who have been students in this country, have lived here since childhood, or have served in the American military—a policy proposed in the Dream Act that had been spurned by Congress. “This is outright lawlessness on the part of the administration,” exclaimed columnist Charles Krauthammer. “The Dream Act was rejected by Congress. It is now being enacted by the executive, despite the express will of the Congress. That is lawless. It may not be an explicit executive order; it’s an implicit one.”²² Interestingly, Obama had just told the amnesty-supporting La Raza organization a month before, “I can’t change immigration laws on my own,” though it “is very tempting.”²³

Then in March 2012, after the Senate had again defeated Obama’s beloved Dream Act the previous December, the Obama Department of Homeland Security proposed a new rule to make it easier for illegal immigrants who are immediate family members of American citizens to apply for permanent residency, which experts say could affect more than one million illegal immigrants. Republicans accused Obama of bypassing Congress again. “President Obama and his administration are bending long-established rules to grant backdoor amnesty to potentially millions of illegal immigrants,” observed Congressman Lamar Smith.²⁴

When Congress refused to pass Obama’s $447 billion jobs bill, including one of its provisions to create a $1.5 billion summer jobs fund, Obama would not be denied, and launched a summer jobs initiative to create 110,000 unpaid “volunteer jobs” that would supposedly help create 180,000 “work opportunities” in 2012. The administration also plans to create a “jobs bank” to facilitate more hiring of youth for summer jobs. Heralding the initiative, the White House declared, “Today’s announcement is the latest in a series of executive actions the Obama administration is taking to strengthen the economy and move the country forward because we can’t wait for Congress to act.”²⁵

The Obama administration’s federal interventionism and lawlessness knows no bounds. Consider these further examples:

• According to columnist Debra J. Saunders, Obama may have begun an undeclared war on states that are imposing the death penalty, using the Food and Drug Administration to withhold approval of drugs used to execute convicted killers.²⁶

• Obama plans to boost “gun safety” via executive order. He is exploring potential changes in gun laws that can be secured through executive action and has directed the attorney general to form working groups with “key stakeholders” to identify common-sense gun control measures “fully respecting Second Amendment rights.”²⁷

• Four-star general William Shelton testified at a classified congressional hearing that the White House pressured him into changing a political briefing to reflect support for a wireless project by Virginia satellite broadband company LightSquared, a Democrat-backed firm, despite the Pentagon’s concerns that the project could interfere with GPS.²⁸ LightSquared is owned by the Harbinger Capital hedge fund, which is led by billionaire investor Phil Falcone. According to the National Legal and Policy Center, after Falcone visited the White House and made large donations to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the FCC granted LightSquared “a highly unusual waiver that allows the company to build out a national 4G wireless network on the cheap.”²⁹

• The administration unilaterally implemented a new waiver plan that makes major changes to the No Child Left Behind Act, flagrantly thwarting the intent of the law and Congress.³⁰ The administration will grant waivers to states from the law’s requirement that schools become proficient in math and reading by 2014, provided they adopt education policy changes the administration deems necessary.³¹ Heritage expert Mike Brownfield says Obama’s fiat amounts to “NCLB on steroids—ballooning the federal role in education.”³²

• At a “Jobs Council” meeting in October 2011, Obama pushed his advisors to approve stimulus projects “without additional congressional authorization.” He ordered them to “scour this report, identify all those areas in which we can act administratively without additional congressional authorization and just get it done.”³³

• Obama “recess-appointed”—when the Senate wasn’t actually in recess—three new members for his controversial National Labor Relations Board, ignoring pleas from Republicans that he respect the NLRB’s traditional bipartisanship.³⁴

• In the crucial swing state of Nevada, Obama announced one of his many schemes to help “responsible underwater homeowners” refinance their mortgages. This time, they won’t need an appraisal or a new full credit check, and “risk-based fees” will be eliminated. He had already announced up to one-year forbearance for homeowners who had lost their jobs.³⁵

• Obama announced a plan to initiate a taxpayer-funded stimulus through the student loan program he had earlier commandeered on behalf of the federal government. Loan repayment rules would be severely relaxed on the absurd theory that students would spend the money they saved and thereby stimulate the economy. In making this move, Obama ignored the staggering potential losses on individual loans that taxpayers will eat, as well as economists’ warnings of an impending college debt bubble that is pushing up tuition rates and jeopardizing credit markets.³⁶

• Obama’s senior appointees at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget ignored a document subpoena from the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations related to the Solyndra debacle.³⁷ This was part of a pattern of the administration defying congressional oversight; Obama’s attorney later told congressional investigators that the administration would not cooperate with a document subpoena on Solyndra because the request was allegedly driven by partisanship.³⁸ The Department of Homeland Security similarly snubbed GOP Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa’s document demand concerning allegations of political interference with FOIA requests to the agency. Issa claims the DHS also instructed career employees not to search for the requested documents.³⁹

• Although federal employees are banned from soliciting money for an election while in any room or building occupied in the discharge of official duties, the White House produced a fundraising video, apparently in the Map Room, to offer Obama and Vice President Joe Biden as dinner guests for a raffle winner.⁴⁰

• Big Brother Obama approved a federal “anti-bullying” policy wherein Education Department officials have threatened school officials with legal action unless they monitor students’ lunchtime chat and even their Facebook posts for ideas and words deemed to be harassing of certain students.⁴¹

• The pro-Israel group Z Street alleges in a lawsuit that an IRS agent said it might not be granted 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status because its position on Israel differs from the Obama administration’s official policies.⁴²

• Despite Obama’s repeated denunciations of the Bush administration for awarding no-bid contracts in the Middle East, under Obama’s watch the U.S. Agency for International Development awarded a no-bid, $266 million contract for a lucrative electricity project in southern Afghanistan.⁴³

• Obama’s closest allies have politicized completely inappropriate venues, such as the denunciation by Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett—with nary a peep from the left-wing ideologues of church/state separation—of congressional Republicans for blocking Obama’s jobs bill during a church service in Atlanta honoring Martin Luther King Jr. Day.⁴⁴

• Obama’s EPA imposed an oppressive $75,000 per day fine on an Idaho couple after designating their property as “wetlands.” The Supreme Court rebuked the agency in a 9 – 0 decision for its high-handed and erroneous edict that the couple was not entitled to judicial review of the EPA’s compliance order, and allowed the suit to proceed.⁴⁵

While he would have us believe he is a quasi-messianic figure who will deliver us from despair, in fact, he has brought America to the brink of financial collapse. Instead of offering constructive solutions to our impending national bankruptcy, he goes back to the same, destructive tactics of scapegoating the so-called wealthy, and not only refuses to exercise leadership to navigate us out of our difficulties, but deliberately obstructs those who offer solutions that will work. While America’s financial house burns, Obama doesn’t merely fiddle, he pours on accelerants.

Unless we radically turn things around, stop our fiscal bleeding, implement policies to grow the economy and restructure entitlements, halt the systematic gutting of our military and national defenses, and stop attacks on our culture, our social fabric, and our religious liberties, America will indeed cease to be a shining city on a hill. But I am confident that the American people, as ardent lovers of liberty and of their country, will make their voices heard in November and replace President Obama with a president who can once again unshackle the American people and help lead us back to financial soundness, economic prosperity, and reliable national security, and restore a climate of liberty, including religious liberty, to this great and wonderful land.