It is absolutely true that the Obama Administration, more than any previous administration, has set new standards of tyrannical-excess in large part due to the activist-anarchist nature of the President and his staff. With that said there remains one significant feature that accommodates executive-abuse and that is the concept of “enabling legislation.” When most bills are passed thru Congress they are merely conceptual in nature and quite non-specific. The details of enacting the intent of the bill/act is accomplished thru language that defers action to a named bureaucracy who is enabled, by the very same bill/act, to create the organisms and regulations (as necessary) to carry out their interpretation of the bill/acts intent.
In essence, the bureaucracy is set loose, outside of the legislative process, to affect regulations and the organism self-perpetuates from there. Nancy Pelosi was correct when she said “…pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it” which of course continuously expands/changes for as long as the act remains law.
More often than any member of Congress will confess is the simple truth that the reason Congress fails to challenge the President’s executive/administrative actions is that they would expose their own incompetence and culpability. Understand that many of the various adventures of the President are enabled by the simple fact that many of the Immigration, Health Care, Environmental, Security, etc. bureaucracies are managed at the cabinet level of the executive branch.
I suspect that the reason the administration feels licensed to do as they wish operates from the premise that the “enabling legislation”, passed by Congress no less, places the right to administrate within the ink of the Presidents pen. Congress should never pass a bill/act that has no boundaries of enforcement or applicability and should never abdicate the legislative process to a non-elected bureaucracy. Ever!
Curtis C. Greco, Founder
