Obama is overreaching

How are we doing regarding the presidential promise to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States in his oath of office?

There is already widespread use of presidential executive orders in the new administration. Those that favor legislation by executive decree point out that every president since George Washington has issued executive orders and presidential proclamations. Yet they fail to acknowledge that before FDR, presidential proclamations were used only to designate special days, like Mother’s Day or Thanksgiving.

Executive orders and presidential proclamations can legally only be instructions from the president to his employees in the executive branch. These do not have force of law because, constitutionally, the president has no legislative power and is not able, constitutionally, to create law. Nor does the president have constitutional authority to enforce these orders and proclamations.

It appears that this is being openly permitted by Congress rather than insisting that what the executive branch is doing is not constitutional. These executive orders violate the constitutional separation of power between executive, legislative and judicial branches of government. They also violate the separation of power between the states and the central government by violating the 10th Amendment.

Russell Brown

Spirit Lake, Idaho