CLANCY: Republicans Must End King Biden III’s Reign Before He Makes Congress A Lame Duck
MICHAEL CLANCYCONTRIBUTOR
Biden, channeling the spirit of King George III — a king whose “repeated … Usurpations” incited the Declaration of Independence — has been issuing executive orders and presidential directives at a relentless pace as his mechanism for imposing the Democrats’ radical, divisive progressive agenda over Republican opposition. These “presidential” actions far exceed Biden’s constitutionally defined powers, and circumvent Congress’s exclusive legislative power under the Constitution.
And the extreme Congressional Progressive Caucus is demanding Biden to do more. They crave government by executive fiat. This is the very threat of tyranny that drove our founders to conceive a constitution with separation of powers, checks and balances, and a Bill of Rights.
In response to this executive abuse of power, Congressional Republicans must reclaim and revitalize Congress’s constitutional legislative power, end the reign of King Biden, and restore our constitutional government. Ultimately, this likely will require Republicans winning the majority in the Senate and increasing their majority in the House in 2024.
The Constitution, as highlighted by Chief Justice Marshall in Marbury v. Madison, “assigns to different departments their respective powers.” Article I of the Constitution plainly states that “All legislative Powers … shall be vested ” in Congress. Note the unambiguous terms “shall” and “All.” This exclusive grant of power could not be clearer. In contrast, the president, per Article II, may only “recommend” — i.e., suggest — measures to Congress and is otherwise required to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” Further, Article I bestows the power of the purse – the power to tax and spend – solely on Congress, not the president.
This distinct separation of powers is the foundational cornerstone of our constitutional system of government. It is, according to Madison’s Federalist 51, “essential to the preservation of liberty,” and “to control the abuses of government.”
Yet, Biden has flagrantly usurped Congress’s legislative power. In just his first 100 days, Biden issued more executive actions than the three previous presidents and more than Presidents Obama and Bush combined. Further, to date, Biden has issued over 200 executive orders and other directives that are sweeping in their transformational scope; for example:
- Halting the border wall construction, diverting the border wall funding, and opening the border to unprecedented illegal immigration, Mexican cartels, Chinese fentanyl, and human trafficking;
- Canceling the Keystone XL pipeline and imposing a moratorium on oil and gas leasing on federal lands and waters; ordering a massive release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve; and ordering environmental and climate change programs, all of which compromise the energy security that is essential to our national security;
- Exporting abortion by ending the ban on the use of federal funds for international abortion services;
- Directing a student loan relief plan that would be one of the largest expenditures in history (forgiving nearly a half trillion dollars of loans owed by 43 million borrowers), and that clearly violates the Constitution’s grant of exclusive spending power to Congress; and
- Ordering a radical racial equity program that requires all government agencies to implement, among other things, “equity-focused leadership,” “Equity Action Plans,” and “equitable outcomes” based on racial identity, all in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s mandate for the “equal protection of the laws,” and the Civil Rights Act’s prohibition on discrimination.
Biden has not acted alone. He has been enabled and emboldened by complicit Democrats acting as co-conspirators in enthusiastically acceding Congress’s constitutional authority to Biden. For more than two years, Democrats in Congress have relied on this abuse of presidential power as an “easy button” to implement a radical progressive agenda. And they want more as the Democrat Progressive Caucus urges Biden to use executive orders to further advance their extreme wish list that would never be enacted by a bipartisan Congress.
In Federalist 47, Madison writes that this accumulation of power “in the same hands” is “the very definition of tyranny.” Protection against this tyranny is dependent on checks and balances with each branch of government “resist[ing] the encroachments of the others.” “Ambition must … counteract ambition” (Federalist 51). Biden and the Congressional Democrats have subverted this critical underlying principle as Biden wields unbridled executive power that would shock Madison.
Biden’s usurpation of power, his acts of “tyranny,” threaten the vitality of our Constitution and our nation. Congressional Republicans must end Biden’s reign by re-energizing Congress’s dormant legislative power and restoring the proper balance of governmental power mandated by the Constitution. This is essential to protecting individual liberty, and ending the plague of destructive governmental abuses that our nation has suffered at the hands of Biden.
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