In anticipation of his winning the 2020 presidential election, the campaign for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is preparing “dozens of executive orders” that he could unilaterally enact in his first days in office, bypassing Congress in doing so.
What are the details?
The potential executive orders touch on a number of different domestic policy issues, such as immigration, the environment, and economic policy, according to a campaign document obtained by the Washington Post:
Aides have presented Sanders with a list of possible executive actions, including more than a dozen options for reversing President Trump’s immigration policy, such as lifting the cap on the number of refugees accepted into the United States and immediately halting border wall construction. Another option is the reinstatement of an Obama-era program that granted legal status to undocumented immigrants brought to America as children.
The list of potential executive orders includes unilaterally allowing the United States to import prescription drugs from Canada; directing the Justice Department to legalize marijuana; and declaring climate change a national emergency while banning the exportation of crude oil. Other options cited in the document include canceling federal contracts for firms paying less than $15 an hour and reversing federal rules blocking U.S. funding to organizations that provide abortion counseling.
The fact that the Sanders campaign has been preparing the list shows a willingness to work around Congress to achieve policy objectives in case the Republicans maintain control of the Senate or take back the House in 2020.
Many of Sanders’ proposals would not be supported by Republicans, and perhaps even many Democrats, in Congress.
The document, put together by Faiz Shakir, Sanders’s campaign manager; Warren Gunnels, a senior adviser; and Josh Orton, the campaign policy director, urges Sanders to use executive authority to right the wrongs of the Trump administration.
“We cannot accept delays from Congress on some of the most pressing issues, especially those like immigration where Trump has governed with racism and for his own corrupt benefit,” the document states.
Why does it matter?
Expanding presidential power has been a concern in American politics for some time. Who expresses the concern, however, is largely determined by which political party has representation in the executive branch.
Last January, amid reports that President Trump intended to declare the crisis at the souther border a national emergency, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) expressed concern that one day a Democratic president, using Trump’s declaration as precedent, could declare a national emergency for a liberal policy objective — like climate change.
“I think the president has broad powers to declare national emergencies. I think they should be used very judiciously,” Rubio said. “It sets long-term precedents, and I can tell you, that for people on my side of the aisle, one of our concerns we should have is: If today, the national emergency is border security and it entitles him to go out and do something, and we all support that — tomorrow, the national security emergency might be, ya know, climate change, so let’s seize fossil fuel plants or something.”
The Sanders campaign document seems to indicate that Rubio’s concerns were valid.
Speaking with the Washington Post, Jason Pye, vice president of legislative affairs at the conservative think tank, FreedomWorks, argued “every time a president leaves office, they leave office with more power the next president in line can take and expand.”
Sanders has no place in America he should Leave America and never ever return we don’t want a Dictator again we already had Obama
If republicans allow Trump to set a precedent freeing presidents of congressional checks against abuses of executive power, the future will bring us far more serious worries than Bernie Sanders.
Some people don’t seem to get that that’s precisely what the current impeachment is about. Some people think it’s all about a particular partisan team competition, when it’s actually about whether the rules from this point forward can be broken with impunity.
Me, I’m compiling a list of all the shit I’m gonna buy the day I win the lottery.
If wishes had wings, pigs would fly, Bernie.
@Spurwing Plover: And we have Bloomturd the shrimp wanna be dictator.
@Greg: Damn Greggie don’t you every get time of the twisting and spinning?
If Sanders is looking like he gets the nod Hillary will fly in on her broom to the rescue, he gets a few more houses and sports cars, to assist with his suicidal mood.
She will make her campaign headquarters in Ripon Wisconsin.
this man is not only a nut job but truly crazy. he requires intense psychiatric medication now. document s forgot gulags. one should read Boris Pasternack’s work Gulag Archipelago also the work by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who won the Noble Prize in Literature in 1970
Here’s the question: why is the WaPoo leaking evidence of Bernie’s extremism? Will Bernie get the hint? Were these EO’s recommended by some of Bernie’s violent fascists exposed on video? Boy, you damned Democrats can really pick em. You try to remove a guy that has done more for this country than anyone in the past40 years and support a communist that tells us he plans to destroy the country.
@Greg: The only dangerous precedent set is the Democrats setting the precedent that all the House needs is a majority and a willingness to lie in order to impeach a President. What this impeachment is about is Democrat desperation and disregard for the Constitution.
Somebody is surprised that there are hypothetical clean-up lists being made to deal with the godawful mess Trump will leave behind?
I didn’t see any examples in the Post article of items that I don’t tend to agree with. As Trump has himself demonstrated, what can be done by executive order can be undone by the same. And Senate republicans are presently advocating for more presidential power with fewer constraints, aren’t they? Have they considered the long-term consequences of failure to hold the current president accountable?
I don’t agree with the Medicare for All proposal, but that’s not something that could be done by executive order to begin with.
Bernie promises to stop payment on US contracted work if any of those working for the firms are earning less than $15/hr.
We have near zero unemployment now.
And people are feeling like spending because they have a lot of money.
But, here’s how it was under Obama (who did the same thing via the Davis/Bacon Act that imposed union wages on gov’t contracted workers) :
The gov’t got played.
The gov’t paid a small amount, say if you hired a gov’t approved contractor to weatherize your home.
You were supposed to pay the difference so the workers might get that “union wage.”
But the boss took the gov’t portion as payment in full thereby keeping his own workers at merely subsistence wages!
You got a good deal, the boss got rich and the workers got reamed.
And that’s how it will be under Bernie.
@Nan G: And Bernie wouldn’t pay his own workers $15 an hour. Well, that’s socialism for you; promises, promises, then you get it up the butt.
It’s all rather moot because Bernie won’t even get close to the nomination oh, much less winning the presidential election.
we’re all waiting to see who the DNC has preordained and it’s going to slip into the pole position, as they did with both Obama and Hillary.
What’s preordained is the outcome of a trial that was openly rigged by the White House with the full cooperation of the Senate Majority Leader—an arrangement totally contrary to what is mandated by the Constitution, and a betrayal of the affirmation oath sworn before God in connection with the trial by every Senate member to render fair and impartial judgement.
Once Senate republicans acquit after refusing to subpoena a single first-hand witness or a single relevant locked-down document, we’ll have 9 more months of revelations between now and the November elections. All of the pending criminal investigations and trials of close Trump associates will see to that.
That’s a long time for voters to reflect on the fact that republicans have given their boy a pass for attempting to pull a foreign government into his reelection scheme, using millions of taxpayer dollars designated for that nation’s defense from Russian invasion as a tool. They will be reminded of what they have done frequently.
@Greg: You’ve not been paying attention. ALL the rigging was conducted in the House. Without the secret testimony, selected leaks, blocking pertinent questions, deciding NOT to call their own witnesses, prohibiting Republican witnesses and blocking White House representation. Every bit of the House process was rigged to result in impeachment, even without any evidence of any impeachable crime.
You’ve also failed to pay attention to the numerous Democrats pledging to impeach Trump from the time he was elected, even confirming that in their view, they HAD to impeach Trump to keep him from being reelected. These are all calls for impeachment before there was even their imaginary “collusion” accusations, confirming without doubt that impeachment when (not if) it happened would be for purely partisan political reasons. They all poisoned the well and NO ONE is in any doubt that this impeachment is not about “abuse of power” but about an election. If you want something “uncontested”, it’s the FACT that Democrats have carried out this travesty out of selfish greed for power, nothing else.
Hopefully, Democrats are punished severely at the ballots for their abuse.
@Greg: hold him accountable for what? Success? Economy? Jobs? Race relations improving?