Where In The Constitution Does It Say Obama Can Rule By Decree And “Do Whatever He Wants”?

By Michael Snyder, on February 11th, 2014

 

By making “at least a dozen major adjustments” to Obamacare without congressional approval, Barack Obama is making a mockery of the U.S. Constitution.  Throughout human history, political power has always tended to become concentrated in the hands of one man.  The Founding Fathers knew this, and they tried very hard to keep that from happening in the United States.  A system in which the people rule themselves is a very precious and fragile thing.  As humans, we all have the tendency to want more power.  That is why a “separation of powers” was such a radical concept.  As Bill Federer is constantly pointing out, the Founding Fathers made our federal government inefficient on purpose.  They wanted a system of checks and balances that would make it difficult to push through major changes very rapidly.  Unfortunately, Barack Obama has become extremely frustrated by this and has expressed his intention to rule by decree as much as he can during the remainder of his second term.
In our system, the legislature is supposed to make the laws, and the executive branch is supposed to execute them.  But Obama does not seem to care for that arrangement too much.  Just recently, he made the following statement…

“We’re not just going to be waiting for legislation in order to make sure that we’re providing Americans the kind of help they need. I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone.”

And during a visit to Monticello on Monday, Obama said the following…

“That’s the good thing about being president, I can do whatever I want.”

Of course that was probably a joke, but it just reveals what his mindset is.
Obama believes that he has a tremendous amount of power, and he has consistently exhibited a blatant disregard for the U.S. Constitution.
This week, Obama made another major change to the Affordable Care Act without getting congressional approval.  At this point, it has become clear that Obama believes that he can change any law, for any reason, any time that he likes.

The following is what the Wall Street Journal had to say about this most recent lawless act…

‘ObamaCare” is useful shorthand for the Affordable Care Act not least because the law increasingly means whatever President Obama says it does on any given day. His latest lawless rewrite arrived on Monday as the White House decided to delay the law’s employer mandate for another year and in some cases maybe forever.

This latest “modification” directly contradicts the plain language of the law, and if the American people do not object to this it will let Obama (and all other future presidents) know that they truly “can do whatever they want”.
Charles Krauthammer is completely outraged by all of this.  He says that this is the kind of “stuff you do in a banana republic”…

But generally speaking you get past the next election by changing your policies, by announcing new initiatives, but not by wantonly changing the law lawlessly. This is stuff you do in a banana republic. It’s as if the law is simply a blackboard on which Obama writes any number he wants, any delay he wants, and any provision.
It’s now reached a point where it is so endemic that nobody even notices or complains. I think if the complaints had started with the first arbitrary changes — and these are are not adjustments or transitions. These are political decisions to minimize the impact leading up to an election. And it’s changing the law in a way that you are not allowed to do.

And he is right.
For those that have not read it, the U.S. Constitution states that the president “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed“.
If Obama wants part of Obamacare to be changed, he must ask Congress to change it.
He cannot change laws all by himself.
As Stanford Law School Professor Michael McConnell stated last year, the Office of Legal Counsel for the Justice Department “has always insisted that the president has no authority, as one such memo put it in 1990, to ‘refuse to enforce a statute he opposes for policy reasons.’”
What in the world is happening to this country?
Meanwhile, those that are objecting to the lawless behavior of the Obama administration are increasingly being portrayed as national security threats.  This is also the kind of thing that we are accustomed to seeing in banana republics.  According to a recent WND article, the Ohio Army National Guard conducted a training drill last year in which the “enemies” were supporters of the 2nd Amendment and had “right-wing beliefs“…

Internal documents from an Ohio Army National Guard training drill conducted in January 2013 describe the details of a mock disaster in which Second Amendment supporters with “anti-government” beliefs were portrayed as domestic terrorists.
The Guard’s 52nd Civil Support Unit and first responders in hazmat suits conducted the training exercise last year in Portmouth, Ohio. In the terror-attack scenario, two Portsmouth Junior High School teachers follow orders from a white-nationalist leader to poison school lunches with mustard gas to advance their “right-wing” beliefs about gun rights.
“It’s the reality of the world we live in,” Portsmouth Police Chief Bill Raisin told WSAZ-TV. “Don’t forget there is such a thing as domestic terrorism. This helps us all be prepared.”

Sadly, this was far from an isolated incident.  For many more examples, please see my previous article entitled “72 Types Of Americans That Are Considered ‘Potential Terrorists’ In Official Government Documents“.
Whether you support Barack Obama or you are deeply opposed to him, hopefully we can all agree that he needs to follow the law.
Hopefully good sense will prevail and Obama will stop trying to rule by decree.  There is a reason why we have a separation of powers and a system of checks and balances.  One man is not supposed to make all of the decisions.  The members of Congress should be loudly objecting to this massive power grab by Obama.
Please pray for Barack Obama and for Congress.  Up to this point, they have been behaving very foolishly.  Let us pray that they will soon return to following the U.S. Constitution.