Northwest Ordinance of 1787
Northwest Ordinance Timeline
Taken from Lessons on the Northwest Ordinance of 1787
Learning materials for secondary school courses in American history, government, and civics
by John J. Patrick
developed by the ERIC Clearinghouse for Social Studies/Social Science Education
September 1987
Main events associated with the Northwest Ordinance appear below in chronological order. This list includes three parts:
(1) events preceding 1787,
(2) events of 1787 (when the Northwest Ordinance was passed) until 1791, and
(3) events from 1800 to 1858.
I. Events Preceding 1787January 2, 1778.
Governor Patrick Henry of Virginia wrote to Colonel George Rogers Clark to instruct him in a mission to Kentucky and lands north and west of the Ohio River. By carrying out this mission, Clark and his men kept the British from occupying Kentucky during the American War of Independence and enabled the United States to claim land north and west of the Ohio River at the end of the war.
July 4, 1778.
American forces led by George Rogers Clark captured the British garrison at Kaskaskia in the Illinois country (at the junction of the Mississippi and Kaskaskia rivers).
February 25, 1779.
American forces led by George Rogers Clark took Vincennes and Fort Sackville (at the junction of the Ohio and Wabash rivers) from the British.
October 10, 1780.
The Continental Congress passed a "Resolution on Public Lands" saying that land ceded to the United States by particular states would be settled and formed eventually into separate states.
March 1, 1781.
All thirteen states of the United States of America ratified (approved) the Articles of Confederation, the first constitution of the new country.
September 3, 1783.
The United States and Great Britain signed the Treaty of Paris, officially ending the War of Independence. The British government recognized the sovereignty (independence) of the United States, and the Treaty established the boundaries of the new nation.
December 20, 1783.
The legislature of Virginia passed the Virginia Act of Cession, which yielded the state's claims to lands in the western part of the country to the United States.
March 1, 1784.
The United States Congress accepted the Virginia Act of Cession.
April 23, 1784.
Congress approved the Territorial Ordinance of 1784, written by Thomas Jefferson, to serve as a plan for temporary government of the western territories. Although it was never put into effect, this plan influenced the content of the 1787 Northwest Ordinance.
May 20, 1785.
Congress passed the Land Ordinance of 1785, which was a plan for dividing and selling land in the western territories.
May 9, 1786.
A committee of Congress, headed by James Monroe of Virginia, made a report about a plan for governance of the Northwest Territory that would be the basis for the subsequent Ordinance of 1787.
September 11-14, 1786.
The Annapolis Convention was held. Delegates from five states&emdash;New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Virginia&emdash;attended this meeting in Annapolis, Maryland. The convention issued a report that called upon the thirteen states to send representatives to a new convention to be held in Philadelphia in May, 1787, for the purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation.
September 18, 1786.
Monroe's committee on government in the Northwest Territory was reorganized; William Johnson of Connecticut became chairman, and Nathan Dane of Massachusetts joined the committee. Dane made important contributions to the Ordinance of 1787 and was the compiler of the final draft of the ordinance.
II. Events of 1787 to 1791February 21, 1787.
Congress approved a convention in Philadelphia to revise the Articles of Confederation.
May 25, 1787.
A quorum of delegates from seven states arrived in Philadelphia to start the meeting known as the Constitutional Convention.
July 13, 1787.
While the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia, the Congress of the Confederation enacted the Northwest Ordinance, which was a plan for governing the territory north and west of the Ohio River. Freedom of religion, right to trial by jury, and public education were asserted as rights of the people. Slavery was banned.
September 17, 1787.
Each of the twelve state delegations voted to approve the final copy of the Constitution, which had been written by participants in the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia. The Convention ended.
September 20, 1787.
Congress received the proposed Constitution from the Philadelphia Convention.
September 28, 1787.
Congress voted to send the Constitution to the legislature of each state. Congress asked each state to hold a special convention, which would either ratify (approve) or reject the Constitution.
October 5, 1787.
Congress selected a governor and other officers for the Northwest Territory according to the terms of the Ordinance of 1787. The first governor was Arthur St. Clair.
April 7, 1788.
Veterans of the War of Independence founded Marietta, at the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingam rivers. This was the first permanent settlement of the Northwest territory after it was organized under the Ordinance of 1787.
June 21, 1788.
New Hampshire was the ninth state to ratify the Constitution. According to Article VII of the Constitution, nine states had to ratify the Constitution to make it the law of the land.
April 1, 1789.
The House of Representatives, elected under the new Constitution, was organized, with thirty of its fifty-nine members present.
April 6, 1789.
The Senate met, with nine of its twenty-two members present. As required by the Constitution, senators counted ballots that had been cast by presidential electors and declared George Washington first president of the United States.
April 30, 1789.
George Washington was inaugurated as first president of the United States under the constitution of 1787.
September 25, 1789.
Congress approved twelve proposed amendments to the Constitution, which would provide certain civil liberties and rights to the people.
December 15, 1791.
Virginia was the eleventh state to ratify ten of the constitutional amendments proposed by Congress. Three fourths of the states had now approved them, as required by Article V of the Constitution. These ten amendments are known as the Bill of Rights.
III. Events of 1800 to 1858May 7, 1800.
A law was enacted by the federal government that established the Indiana Territory.
February 19, 1803.
Ohio became the first state formed from the Northwest Territory. Ohio entered the Federal Union as the seventeenth state.
December 5, 1804.
Governor Harrison proclaimed that the Indiana Territory had advanced to the "second or representative grade of Government" under provisions of the Northwest Ordinance.
January 11, 1805.
An act of Congress created the Territory of Michigan.
February 3, 1809.
An act of Congress created the Territory of Illinois.
December 11, 1815.
A petition for statehood was approved by the Indiana legislature and sent to the Congress of the United States. The petition claimed that Indiana Territory had met conditions required for statehood established by the Northwest Ordinance.
April 19, 1816.
The federal government passed an Enabling Act that provided for election of delegates to a convention to write a constitution for state government in Indiana.
June 10, 1816.
Delegates assembled at Corydon to write a constitution for state government in Indiana.
June 29, 1816.
Delegates to the Indiana Constitutional Convention signed the new constitution.
December 11, 1816.
James Madison, president of the United States, approved a resolution by Congress admitting Indiana to the Federal Union as the nineteenth state.
December 3, 1818.
Illinois was admitted to the Federal Union as the twenty-first state.
April 20, 1836.
An act of Congress created the Territory of Wisconsin.
January 22, 1837.
Michigan was admitted to the Federal Union as the Twenty-sixth state.
May 29, 1848.
Wisconsin was admitted to the Federal Union as the thirtieth state.
May 11, 1858.
Minnesota became the thirty-second state. A portion of the state, east of the Mississippi River, had been part of the original Northwest Territory.
Read this and share it with the political class as it lays out the intentions of how land was to be divided. In terms for high school students.
Taken from Lessons on the Northwest Ordinance of 1787
Learning materials for secondary school courses in American history, government, and civics
by John J. Patrick
developed by the ERIC Clearinghouse for Social Studies/Social Science Education
September 1987
Main events associated with the Northwest Ordinance appear below in chronological order. This list includes three parts:
(1) events preceding 1787,
(2) events of 1787 (when the Northwest Ordinance was passed) until 1791, and
(3) events from 1800 to 1858.
I. Events Preceding 1787January 2, 1778.
Governor Patrick Henry of Virginia wrote to Colonel George Rogers Clark to instruct him in a mission to Kentucky and lands north and west of the Ohio River. By carrying out this mission, Clark and his men kept the British from occupying Kentucky during the American War of Independence and enabled the United States to claim land north and west of the Ohio River at the end of the war.
July 4, 1778.
American forces led by George Rogers Clark captured the British garrison at Kaskaskia in the Illinois country (at the junction of the Mississippi and Kaskaskia rivers).
February 25, 1779.
American forces led by George Rogers Clark took Vincennes and Fort Sackville (at the junction of the Ohio and Wabash rivers) from the British.
October 10, 1780.
The Continental Congress passed a "Resolution on Public Lands" saying that land ceded to the United States by particular states would be settled and formed eventually into separate states.
March 1, 1781.
All thirteen states of the United States of America ratified (approved) the Articles of Confederation, the first constitution of the new country.
September 3, 1783.
The United States and Great Britain signed the Treaty of Paris, officially ending the War of Independence. The British government recognized the sovereignty (independence) of the United States, and the Treaty established the boundaries of the new nation.
December 20, 1783.
The legislature of Virginia passed the Virginia Act of Cession, which yielded the state's claims to lands in the western part of the country to the United States.
March 1, 1784.
The United States Congress accepted the Virginia Act of Cession.
April 23, 1784.
Congress approved the Territorial Ordinance of 1784, written by Thomas Jefferson, to serve as a plan for temporary government of the western territories. Although it was never put into effect, this plan influenced the content of the 1787 Northwest Ordinance.
May 20, 1785.
Congress passed the Land Ordinance of 1785, which was a plan for dividing and selling land in the western territories.
May 9, 1786.
A committee of Congress, headed by James Monroe of Virginia, made a report about a plan for governance of the Northwest Territory that would be the basis for the subsequent Ordinance of 1787.
September 11-14, 1786.
The Annapolis Convention was held. Delegates from five states&emdash;New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Virginia&emdash;attended this meeting in Annapolis, Maryland. The convention issued a report that called upon the thirteen states to send representatives to a new convention to be held in Philadelphia in May, 1787, for the purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation.
September 18, 1786.
Monroe's committee on government in the Northwest Territory was reorganized; William Johnson of Connecticut became chairman, and Nathan Dane of Massachusetts joined the committee. Dane made important contributions to the Ordinance of 1787 and was the compiler of the final draft of the ordinance.
II. Events of 1787 to 1791February 21, 1787.
Congress approved a convention in Philadelphia to revise the Articles of Confederation.
May 25, 1787.
A quorum of delegates from seven states arrived in Philadelphia to start the meeting known as the Constitutional Convention.
July 13, 1787.
While the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia, the Congress of the Confederation enacted the Northwest Ordinance, which was a plan for governing the territory north and west of the Ohio River. Freedom of religion, right to trial by jury, and public education were asserted as rights of the people. Slavery was banned.
September 17, 1787.
Each of the twelve state delegations voted to approve the final copy of the Constitution, which had been written by participants in the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia. The Convention ended.
September 20, 1787.
Congress received the proposed Constitution from the Philadelphia Convention.
September 28, 1787.
Congress voted to send the Constitution to the legislature of each state. Congress asked each state to hold a special convention, which would either ratify (approve) or reject the Constitution.
October 5, 1787.
Congress selected a governor and other officers for the Northwest Territory according to the terms of the Ordinance of 1787. The first governor was Arthur St. Clair.
April 7, 1788.
Veterans of the War of Independence founded Marietta, at the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingam rivers. This was the first permanent settlement of the Northwest territory after it was organized under the Ordinance of 1787.
June 21, 1788.
New Hampshire was the ninth state to ratify the Constitution. According to Article VII of the Constitution, nine states had to ratify the Constitution to make it the law of the land.
April 1, 1789.
The House of Representatives, elected under the new Constitution, was organized, with thirty of its fifty-nine members present.
April 6, 1789.
The Senate met, with nine of its twenty-two members present. As required by the Constitution, senators counted ballots that had been cast by presidential electors and declared George Washington first president of the United States.
April 30, 1789.
George Washington was inaugurated as first president of the United States under the constitution of 1787.
September 25, 1789.
Congress approved twelve proposed amendments to the Constitution, which would provide certain civil liberties and rights to the people.
December 15, 1791.
Virginia was the eleventh state to ratify ten of the constitutional amendments proposed by Congress. Three fourths of the states had now approved them, as required by Article V of the Constitution. These ten amendments are known as the Bill of Rights.
III. Events of 1800 to 1858May 7, 1800.
A law was enacted by the federal government that established the Indiana Territory.
February 19, 1803.
Ohio became the first state formed from the Northwest Territory. Ohio entered the Federal Union as the seventeenth state.
December 5, 1804.
Governor Harrison proclaimed that the Indiana Territory had advanced to the "second or representative grade of Government" under provisions of the Northwest Ordinance.
January 11, 1805.
An act of Congress created the Territory of Michigan.
February 3, 1809.
An act of Congress created the Territory of Illinois.
December 11, 1815.
A petition for statehood was approved by the Indiana legislature and sent to the Congress of the United States. The petition claimed that Indiana Territory had met conditions required for statehood established by the Northwest Ordinance.
April 19, 1816.
The federal government passed an Enabling Act that provided for election of delegates to a convention to write a constitution for state government in Indiana.
June 10, 1816.
Delegates assembled at Corydon to write a constitution for state government in Indiana.
June 29, 1816.
Delegates to the Indiana Constitutional Convention signed the new constitution.
December 11, 1816.
James Madison, president of the United States, approved a resolution by Congress admitting Indiana to the Federal Union as the nineteenth state.
December 3, 1818.
Illinois was admitted to the Federal Union as the twenty-first state.
April 20, 1836.
An act of Congress created the Territory of Wisconsin.
January 22, 1837.
Michigan was admitted to the Federal Union as the Twenty-sixth state.
May 29, 1848.
Wisconsin was admitted to the Federal Union as the thirtieth state.
May 11, 1858.
Minnesota became the thirty-second state. A portion of the state, east of the Mississippi River, had been part of the original Northwest Territory.
Read this and share it with the political class as it lays out the intentions of how land was to be divided. In terms for high school students.
EPA and unconstitutional agencies now allowed in Article I section 8 enumerated powers to the Legislature. So, they have no authority to pass such laws and create such agencies.
How Obama abuses executive power to make the law of the land
A Washington Examiner special series of 10 Articles
With the Stroke of a Pen: How Obama abuses executive power to make the law of the land.
About this series
On Nov. 16, 2010, just days after voters gave Republicans control of the House of Representatives, the progressive think tank Center for American Progress published a report titled "The Power of the President."
Obama-Biden Transition Project Chairman John Podesta introduced the report, writing that "in the aftermath of this month's midterm congressional elections, pundits and politicians across the ideological spectrum are focusing on how difficult it will be for President Barack Obama to advance his policy priorities through Congress."
"Some debate whether the administration should tack to the center and compromise with the new House leadership," Podesta continued.
"As a former White House chief of staff, I believe those to be the wrong preoccupations. President Obama's ability to govern the country as chief executive presents an opportunity to demonstrate strength, resolve, and a capacity to get things done," Podesta said.
Not only did Obama almost immediately embrace the report's call for maximizing executive power to achieve progressive ends without Congress, it even branded the effort "We Can't Wait," thus advertising the fact that Obama had abandoned all pretense of following the U.S. Constitution's carefully drawn separation-of-powers doctrine.
In this Washington Examiner series, Senior Writer Conn Carroll documents the many times Obama has flagrantly abused executive authority to advance his liberal agenda without congressional approval.
The top 10 instances will be examined over the next two weeks, and more will come later.
Stories in this series:
1. Immigration amnesty by executive memo
2. The employer mandate delay
3. War in Libya
4. The illegal Solyndra contract modification
5. Rewriting federal education law by waiver
6. Unconstitutional NLRB appointees
7. The Yucca Mountain delay
8. Gutting welfare reform
9. The Gulf of Mexico drilling moratorium
10.Regulating the Internet
About this series
On Nov. 16, 2010, just days after voters gave Republicans control of the House of Representatives, the progressive think tank Center for American Progress published a report titled "The Power of the President."
Obama-Biden Transition Project Chairman John Podesta introduced the report, writing that "in the aftermath of this month's midterm congressional elections, pundits and politicians across the ideological spectrum are focusing on how difficult it will be for President Barack Obama to advance his policy priorities through Congress."
"Some debate whether the administration should tack to the center and compromise with the new House leadership," Podesta continued.
"As a former White House chief of staff, I believe those to be the wrong preoccupations. President Obama's ability to govern the country as chief executive presents an opportunity to demonstrate strength, resolve, and a capacity to get things done," Podesta said.
Not only did Obama almost immediately embrace the report's call for maximizing executive power to achieve progressive ends without Congress, it even branded the effort "We Can't Wait," thus advertising the fact that Obama had abandoned all pretense of following the U.S. Constitution's carefully drawn separation-of-powers doctrine.
In this Washington Examiner series, Senior Writer Conn Carroll documents the many times Obama has flagrantly abused executive authority to advance his liberal agenda without congressional approval.
The top 10 instances will be examined over the next two weeks, and more will come later.
Stories in this series:
1. Immigration amnesty by executive memo
2. The employer mandate delay
3. War in Libya
4. The illegal Solyndra contract modification
5. Rewriting federal education law by waiver
6. Unconstitutional NLRB appointees
7. The Yucca Mountain delay
8. Gutting welfare reform
9. The Gulf of Mexico drilling moratorium
10.Regulating the Internet
***************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
How Obama abuses executive power to make the law of the land
Day 1
Obama illegally decrees amnesty for many illegal immigrants
Analysis: With the Stroke of a Pen
President Obama promised Univision host Jorge Ramos, “I cannot guarantee that it is going to be...
Locked in a fierce fight for the Democratic presidential nomination, President Obama promised Univision host Jorge Ramos, “I cannot guarantee that it is going to be in the first 100 days. But what I can guarantee is that we will have in the first year an immigration bill that I strongly support and that I'm promoting. And I want to move that forward as quickly as possible.”
But Obama’s first year in office came and went without any significant support for immigration reform such as the DREAM Act. Obama also let almost all of 2010 go by without any action.
Only after Democrats lost the House in November 2010 did Obama secure a vote for the DREAM Act in Congress. And then the Senate promptly failed to muster the 60 votes needed to end a Republican filibuster.
By 2012, Obama was heading into an election year where he desperately needed Latino voters to turn out for him. But he had nothing to show them. He had broken his promise to promote immigration reform during his first year in office, and he had waited until after a crushing defeat in the midterm elections to pursue the issue at all.
Instead of taking his case to the American people in an election year, Obama abandoned the democratic process entirely by unilaterally rewriting American immigration policy.
On June 15, 2012, Obama announced his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy. Illegal immigrants who came to the United States before they were 16, were younger than 31, had been in the United States for at least 5 years, were either in school or had graduated high school, and had not committed “significant” crimes, would be given “deferred action” status.
Sometimes also called “non-priority enforcement status,” immigrants granted such relief are not citizens, or even legal permanent residents. But they can obtain a work permit, get a Social Security number, and apply for a driver’s license. The status is temporary, however, and must be renewed every two years.
Presidents have exercised prosecutorial discretion in immigration enforcement since the founding of the country. Some immigrants are favored over others for foreign policy reasons, other immigrants are targeted for their political beliefs, and still others are granted relief for humanitarian reasons.
But these acts of discretion were always done on an ad hoc, case-by-case basis. They were not a wholesale rewrite of immigration policy, let alone one that had been specifically rejected by Congress.
Never before in the history of the United States had an American president rewritten immigration policy by administrative fiat. The tactic is so new, and so audacious, that there is simply no body of case law available to establish that the scope of Obama’s administrative amnesty plan is illegal.
And the scope of Obama’s administrative amnesty is still growing. On Aug. 23, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency issued a memo directing all ICE personnel to exercise “prosecutorial discretion” in favor of any illegal immigrant who claimed they were a parent or guardian of any minor currently in the U.S.
The memo does not direct ICE agents to grant these immigrants formal “deferred action” status, but it does make it highly unlikely any of them will ever be deported.
Since it is unlikely any individual U.S. citizen could establish standing in federal court to challenge any of these actions, nothing is stopping Obama from administratively granting amnesty to every illegal immigrant in the country today, and those that enter as long as he remains president.
The only way to stop Obama is for Congress to deny executive branch funding for implementing any aspect of the administrative amnesty he is ordering by executive decree.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/day-1-obama-illegally-decrees-amnesty-for-many-illegal-immigrants/article/2535847
Obama illegally decrees amnesty for many illegal immigrants
Analysis: With the Stroke of a Pen
President Obama promised Univision host Jorge Ramos, “I cannot guarantee that it is going to be...
Locked in a fierce fight for the Democratic presidential nomination, President Obama promised Univision host Jorge Ramos, “I cannot guarantee that it is going to be in the first 100 days. But what I can guarantee is that we will have in the first year an immigration bill that I strongly support and that I'm promoting. And I want to move that forward as quickly as possible.”
But Obama’s first year in office came and went without any significant support for immigration reform such as the DREAM Act. Obama also let almost all of 2010 go by without any action.
Only after Democrats lost the House in November 2010 did Obama secure a vote for the DREAM Act in Congress. And then the Senate promptly failed to muster the 60 votes needed to end a Republican filibuster.
By 2012, Obama was heading into an election year where he desperately needed Latino voters to turn out for him. But he had nothing to show them. He had broken his promise to promote immigration reform during his first year in office, and he had waited until after a crushing defeat in the midterm elections to pursue the issue at all.
Instead of taking his case to the American people in an election year, Obama abandoned the democratic process entirely by unilaterally rewriting American immigration policy.
On June 15, 2012, Obama announced his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy. Illegal immigrants who came to the United States before they were 16, were younger than 31, had been in the United States for at least 5 years, were either in school or had graduated high school, and had not committed “significant” crimes, would be given “deferred action” status.
Sometimes also called “non-priority enforcement status,” immigrants granted such relief are not citizens, or even legal permanent residents. But they can obtain a work permit, get a Social Security number, and apply for a driver’s license. The status is temporary, however, and must be renewed every two years.
Presidents have exercised prosecutorial discretion in immigration enforcement since the founding of the country. Some immigrants are favored over others for foreign policy reasons, other immigrants are targeted for their political beliefs, and still others are granted relief for humanitarian reasons.
But these acts of discretion were always done on an ad hoc, case-by-case basis. They were not a wholesale rewrite of immigration policy, let alone one that had been specifically rejected by Congress.
Never before in the history of the United States had an American president rewritten immigration policy by administrative fiat. The tactic is so new, and so audacious, that there is simply no body of case law available to establish that the scope of Obama’s administrative amnesty plan is illegal.
And the scope of Obama’s administrative amnesty is still growing. On Aug. 23, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency issued a memo directing all ICE personnel to exercise “prosecutorial discretion” in favor of any illegal immigrant who claimed they were a parent or guardian of any minor currently in the U.S.
The memo does not direct ICE agents to grant these immigrants formal “deferred action” status, but it does make it highly unlikely any of them will ever be deported.
Since it is unlikely any individual U.S. citizen could establish standing in federal court to challenge any of these actions, nothing is stopping Obama from administratively granting amnesty to every illegal immigrant in the country today, and those that enter as long as he remains president.
The only way to stop Obama is for Congress to deny executive branch funding for implementing any aspect of the administrative amnesty he is ordering by executive decree.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/day-1-obama-illegally-decrees-amnesty-for-many-illegal-immigrants/article/2535847
How Obama abuses executive power to make the law of the land
Day 2
Obamacare mandate is whatever Obama -- or any future president -- says it is
Analysis: With the Stroke of a Pen
President Barack Obama after speaking about the Affordable Care Act during an event in the East...
“If Congress thinks that what I’ve done is inappropriate or wrong in some fashion, they’re free to make that case,” President Obama told the New York Times about Republican objections to his decision earlier this year to delay Obamacare’s employer mandate for a year.
“But ultimately, I’m not concerned about their opinions,” Obama continued, “very few of them, by the way, are lawyers, much less constitutional lawyers.”
Actually, there are 128 lawyers in the House of Representatives and another 45 in the Senate, spanning both major political parties and making law the top profession among members of Congress.
Set aside Obama’s gratuitous and false dig at his opponents in Congress, however, and look at what the Obamacare law says, compared to the justification used by the president and his appointees for the mandate delay.
Section 1513 of the Affordable Care Act, titled “Shared responsibility for employers regarding health coverage,” levies a $2,000-per-employee fine on all employers employing more than 50 people who do not offer health insurance to their employees.
That fine goes up to $3,000 for every employee who obtains insurance through Obamacare exchanges and who receives a subsidy from the government while doing so.
This provision is an integral part of Obamacare. Without it, many more businesses would stop paying expensive health insurance premiums for their employees, and instead let taxpayers pick up the tab through the Obamacare exchanges.
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that delaying the employer mandate for one year would add $12 billion in costs to Obamacare’s price tag. The CBO also warned that making the delay permanent would further drive up Obamacare’s cost.
Delaying the provision will force an estimated 1 million Americans out of their current employer-sponsored health plans. Half of those people will get less desirable health insurance through Medicaid, and the other half will get no insurance at all. CBO predicted those numbers would increase dramatically with a permanent delay.
Section 1513(d) of Obamacare also clearly states, “The amendments made by this section shall apply to months beginning after Dec. 31, 2013.”
Nothing in the employer mandate section says the president, the secretaryof Health and Human Services, or any other government official can change the effective date.
So what section of Obamacare did Obama cite to justify his employer mandate delay? None.
Instead, the Treasury Department asserted, in both a letter and testimony to Congress, that Section 7805(a) of the Internal Revenue Code authorizes Obama to grant “transition relief” to as many parties as he sees fit for as long as he wants.
But here is what Section 7805(a) actually says:
“Except where such authority is expressly given by this title to any person other than an officer or employee of the Treasury Department, the Secretary shall prescribe all needful rules and regulations for the enforcement of this title, including all rules and regulations as may be necessary by reason of any alteration of law in relation to internal revenue.”
That’s it. That was Obama’s entire legal justification for the Obamacare mandate delay.
Treasury said the IRS has previously used the section to delay a penalty under the 2007 Small Business and Work Opportunity Act and a tax hike in the 2011 Airport and Airway Extension Act.
But both of those delays were for less than a year (six months and one month, respectively), only applied to minor portions of much broader legislation, and were issued the same year the original legislation passed.
By contrast, the Obamacare employer-mandate delay was issued more than three years after the original law passed, will be in effect at least a year (possibly longer), and involves a major cost saving feature of the underlying legislation.
Furthermore, there is simply no limiting principle to Obama’s chosen legal justification for the employer-mandate delay. If one year, why not two? If two years, why not four? If the employer mandate can be delayed, why not the individual mandate.
Nothing in 7805(a) in any way limits the president’s discretion, so, by using that as his sole legal justification, Obama is enabling himself and any future president to rewrite the law at will with no input from Congress.
As any honest constitutional lawyer would tell you, that is not right.
Conn Carroll is a senior editorial writer for the Washington Examiner.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/day-2-obamacare-mandate-is-whatever-obama-or-any-future-president-says-it-is/article/2535909
Obamacare mandate is whatever Obama -- or any future president -- says it is
Analysis: With the Stroke of a Pen
President Barack Obama after speaking about the Affordable Care Act during an event in the East...
“If Congress thinks that what I’ve done is inappropriate or wrong in some fashion, they’re free to make that case,” President Obama told the New York Times about Republican objections to his decision earlier this year to delay Obamacare’s employer mandate for a year.
“But ultimately, I’m not concerned about their opinions,” Obama continued, “very few of them, by the way, are lawyers, much less constitutional lawyers.”
Actually, there are 128 lawyers in the House of Representatives and another 45 in the Senate, spanning both major political parties and making law the top profession among members of Congress.
Set aside Obama’s gratuitous and false dig at his opponents in Congress, however, and look at what the Obamacare law says, compared to the justification used by the president and his appointees for the mandate delay.
Section 1513 of the Affordable Care Act, titled “Shared responsibility for employers regarding health coverage,” levies a $2,000-per-employee fine on all employers employing more than 50 people who do not offer health insurance to their employees.
That fine goes up to $3,000 for every employee who obtains insurance through Obamacare exchanges and who receives a subsidy from the government while doing so.
This provision is an integral part of Obamacare. Without it, many more businesses would stop paying expensive health insurance premiums for their employees, and instead let taxpayers pick up the tab through the Obamacare exchanges.
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that delaying the employer mandate for one year would add $12 billion in costs to Obamacare’s price tag. The CBO also warned that making the delay permanent would further drive up Obamacare’s cost.
Delaying the provision will force an estimated 1 million Americans out of their current employer-sponsored health plans. Half of those people will get less desirable health insurance through Medicaid, and the other half will get no insurance at all. CBO predicted those numbers would increase dramatically with a permanent delay.
Section 1513(d) of Obamacare also clearly states, “The amendments made by this section shall apply to months beginning after Dec. 31, 2013.”
Nothing in the employer mandate section says the president, the secretaryof Health and Human Services, or any other government official can change the effective date.
So what section of Obamacare did Obama cite to justify his employer mandate delay? None.
Instead, the Treasury Department asserted, in both a letter and testimony to Congress, that Section 7805(a) of the Internal Revenue Code authorizes Obama to grant “transition relief” to as many parties as he sees fit for as long as he wants.
But here is what Section 7805(a) actually says:
“Except where such authority is expressly given by this title to any person other than an officer or employee of the Treasury Department, the Secretary shall prescribe all needful rules and regulations for the enforcement of this title, including all rules and regulations as may be necessary by reason of any alteration of law in relation to internal revenue.”
That’s it. That was Obama’s entire legal justification for the Obamacare mandate delay.
Treasury said the IRS has previously used the section to delay a penalty under the 2007 Small Business and Work Opportunity Act and a tax hike in the 2011 Airport and Airway Extension Act.
But both of those delays were for less than a year (six months and one month, respectively), only applied to minor portions of much broader legislation, and were issued the same year the original legislation passed.
By contrast, the Obamacare employer-mandate delay was issued more than three years after the original law passed, will be in effect at least a year (possibly longer), and involves a major cost saving feature of the underlying legislation.
Furthermore, there is simply no limiting principle to Obama’s chosen legal justification for the employer-mandate delay. If one year, why not two? If two years, why not four? If the employer mandate can be delayed, why not the individual mandate.
Nothing in 7805(a) in any way limits the president’s discretion, so, by using that as his sole legal justification, Obama is enabling himself and any future president to rewrite the law at will with no input from Congress.
As any honest constitutional lawyer would tell you, that is not right.
Conn Carroll is a senior editorial writer for the Washington Examiner.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/day-2-obamacare-mandate-is-whatever-obama-or-any-future-president-says-it-is/article/2535909
Obama ignored Congress before launching Libyan war Part 3
Analysis: With the Stroke of a Pen
Day 3 of the Washington Examiner's 10-part series "With the Stroke of a Pen: How Obama abuses executive power to make the law of the land."
President Obama made it clear in a Mar. 3, 2011, statement from the White House: "The violence must stop. Muammar Gaddafi has lost legitimacy to lead, and he must leave."
The Arab Spring had come to Libya, generating calls for U.S. and Western assistance to the gathering rebel forces threatening Gaddafi, the North African nation’s long-time dictator and U.S. nemesis, with overthrow.
"I don't want us hamstrung," Obama continued. "I want us to be making our decisions based on what's going to be best for the Libyan people in consultation with the international community."
And consult the international community Obama did. On Mar. 12, Obama won approval from the Arab League to impose a no-fly zone on Libya. On Mar. 17, the United Nations approved the use of force as well.
On Mar. 19, U.S. and British ships instituted a naval blockade of Libya, while the U.S., French, British and Canadian air forces began a bombing campaign that lasted seven months, one week and five days.
Over that time, the U.S.-led forces decimated Libyan military and civilian infrastructure, killing countless Libyan military personnel, and, according to the United Nations Human Rights Council, at least 60 civilians as well.
But at no point during this prolonged use of military force, did Obama ever seek approval from Congress. That's unconstitutional. Article I of the United States Constitution unequivocally grants Congress, not the president, the power “to declare war.”
This does not mean that Congress must officially declare war every time the president uses military force. Congress has declared war only five times in the history of the country. But it does mean that the president must seek approval from Congress for the use of force at the earliest possible date.
This is what President George W. Bush did when he secured an “Authorization for the Use of Force” before he invaded Iraq in 2003.
Article II of the U.S. Constitution identifies the president as “the commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.” This, the Supreme Court has held, empowers the president to use military force if the U.S. has been attacked or faces imminent attack.
In 1986, for example, President Reagandropped 60 tons of bombs on Libya in response to Gaddafi's sponsoring of a terrorist attack on U.S. soldiers in Germany.
And in 1998, President Clinton used cruise missiles to destroy terrorist bases in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan in response to al Qaeda attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
But both of those military actions lasted less than a day and were in response to a direct attack on diplomatic facilities that are recognized by the U.N. as sovereign U.S. territory.
By contrast, Libya had not attacked America in more than 20 years, there was no evidence it was about to, either, and Obama’s military campaign against Gaddafi lasted more than half a year.
There is no case law defining where the line between a small-scale military action like Reagan’s Libya bombing ends, and where the line for a full-scale “war” begins. But surely a president asking the United Nations for approval of an operation involving naval and air forces for many months has clearly crossed that line.
Unfortunately it is virtually impossible for any American to hold Obama accountable for the extended use of military force without permission from Congress.
No single person would have standing to challenge a president’s orders, and even if they did, a federal court would probably view it as a political question and defer to Congress.
The only way the nation has of holding a president accountable for his use of the military is for Congress to insist on being included in the decision-making process.
But that would require Congress to use one of its multiple constitutional tools such as defunding specific programs to force the president to comply with the Constitution.
Conn Carroll is a senior editorial writer for the Washington Examiner.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/day-3-obama-ignored-congress-before-launching-libyan-war/article/2535988
Day 3 of the Washington Examiner's 10-part series "With the Stroke of a Pen: How Obama abuses executive power to make the law of the land."
President Obama made it clear in a Mar. 3, 2011, statement from the White House: "The violence must stop. Muammar Gaddafi has lost legitimacy to lead, and he must leave."
The Arab Spring had come to Libya, generating calls for U.S. and Western assistance to the gathering rebel forces threatening Gaddafi, the North African nation’s long-time dictator and U.S. nemesis, with overthrow.
"I don't want us hamstrung," Obama continued. "I want us to be making our decisions based on what's going to be best for the Libyan people in consultation with the international community."
And consult the international community Obama did. On Mar. 12, Obama won approval from the Arab League to impose a no-fly zone on Libya. On Mar. 17, the United Nations approved the use of force as well.
On Mar. 19, U.S. and British ships instituted a naval blockade of Libya, while the U.S., French, British and Canadian air forces began a bombing campaign that lasted seven months, one week and five days.
Over that time, the U.S.-led forces decimated Libyan military and civilian infrastructure, killing countless Libyan military personnel, and, according to the United Nations Human Rights Council, at least 60 civilians as well.
But at no point during this prolonged use of military force, did Obama ever seek approval from Congress. That's unconstitutional. Article I of the United States Constitution unequivocally grants Congress, not the president, the power “to declare war.”
This does not mean that Congress must officially declare war every time the president uses military force. Congress has declared war only five times in the history of the country. But it does mean that the president must seek approval from Congress for the use of force at the earliest possible date.
This is what President George W. Bush did when he secured an “Authorization for the Use of Force” before he invaded Iraq in 2003.
Article II of the U.S. Constitution identifies the president as “the commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.” This, the Supreme Court has held, empowers the president to use military force if the U.S. has been attacked or faces imminent attack.
In 1986, for example, President Reagandropped 60 tons of bombs on Libya in response to Gaddafi's sponsoring of a terrorist attack on U.S. soldiers in Germany.
And in 1998, President Clinton used cruise missiles to destroy terrorist bases in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan in response to al Qaeda attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
But both of those military actions lasted less than a day and were in response to a direct attack on diplomatic facilities that are recognized by the U.N. as sovereign U.S. territory.
By contrast, Libya had not attacked America in more than 20 years, there was no evidence it was about to, either, and Obama’s military campaign against Gaddafi lasted more than half a year.
There is no case law defining where the line between a small-scale military action like Reagan’s Libya bombing ends, and where the line for a full-scale “war” begins. But surely a president asking the United Nations for approval of an operation involving naval and air forces for many months has clearly crossed that line.
Unfortunately it is virtually impossible for any American to hold Obama accountable for the extended use of military force without permission from Congress.
No single person would have standing to challenge a president’s orders, and even if they did, a federal court would probably view it as a political question and defer to Congress.
The only way the nation has of holding a president accountable for his use of the military is for Congress to insist on being included in the decision-making process.
But that would require Congress to use one of its multiple constitutional tools such as defunding specific programs to force the president to comply with the Constitution.
Conn Carroll is a senior editorial writer for the Washington Examiner.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/day-3-obama-ignored-congress-before-launching-libyan-war/article/2535988
Obama donor gained nearly $1 billion in tax credits in Solyndra bankruptcy Part 4
Analysis: With the Stroke of a Pen
Day 4 of the Washington Examiner's 10-part series "With the Stroke of a Pen: How Obama abuses executive power to make the law of the land."
Most people who follow the news are aware that President Obama invested $527 million in Solyndra, the now-bankrupt California-based solar panel manufacturing company.
What is much less well-known is that the federal government was legally required to cut its losses of tax dollars just months into the project, and that only an illegal loan modification made to benefit an Obama fundraiser led to taxpayers losing more than $500 million.
“The true engine of economic growth will always be companies like Solyndra,” Obama declared in May 2010, but even then, the company was burning through more than $10 million a month and headed towards bankruptcy.
By December 2010, Solyndra was so cash-poor that it missed a $5 million payment to an Equity Funding Account as required by the firm’s deal with the Energy Department.
The DOE could have canceled the Solyndra loan then and cut the taxpayers’ losses at the $440 million previously disbursed to the company. Instead, DOE told Solyndra the government would “forbear” its right to cancel the contract as long as Solyndra complied with certain federal regulations on compensation for its employees.
At this point, the largest private backer of Solyndra, Argonaut Private Equity (owned by Obama donor George Kaiser of Tulsa, Okla.), demanded that DOE restructure the original loan agreement or they would take the company into bankruptcy.
Kaiser’s demand got the attention of Frances Nwachuku, DOE’s director of portfolio management for the loan programs office. Nwachuku offered to modify the original loan agreement to ensure Argonaut would be the first creditor in line – ahead of U.S. taxpayers – should Solyndra file for bankruptcy.
This type of agreement happens all the time in the private sector. But private-sector financing is not controlled by the Energy Policy Act of 2005.
The DOE’s loan guarantee program is.
Section 1702(d)(3) of that law clearly states, "The obligation shall be subject to the condition that the obligation is not subordinate to other financing."
In other words, the taxpayers must come before any other creditors, which made Nwachuku’s offer illegal. The day after Nwachuku’s offer, DOE Chief Counsel Susan Richardson told DOE General Counsel Scott Blake Harris they needed to talk “as soon as possible.”
DOE also asked its outside counsel, Morrison & Foerster LLP, for its opinion, which described the offer as “prohibited.”
The Office of Management and Budget also concluded that the DOE’s Solyndra loan modification was illegal. On Dec. 14, 2010, OMB analyst Kelly Colyar, formerly the credit policy director at DOE, informed OMB Deputy Associate Director Richard Mertens of a problem “regarding the proposed structure’s compliance with the statutory requirement that the DOE guaranteed debt not be subordinate to other financing.” A Jan. 4, 2011, OMB staff memo said the same thing.
Colyar estimated that if Solyndra was immediately liquidated, taxpayers would only lose $141 million. But if DOE went ahead with the new deal, taxpayers would lose $385 million, due in no small part to the subordination of the taxpayer loan.
Obama’s DOE restricted the Solyndra loan anyway.
In direct opposition to the plain meaning of the statute and OMB guidelines on government contracting, DOE lawyers invented a new legal theory that the ban on subordination applied only at loan origination and was not a “continuing obligation.”
In other words, since the Solyndra restructuring was a loan modification, DOE could do whatever it wanted.
Upon hearing this novel interpretation, OMB Energy Branch Chief Kevin Carroll said the DOE’s reasoning meant “that basically DOE could modify to allow subordination on any loan, at any time, for any reason.”
Kaiser has done well despite Solyndra’s woes. Taxpayers can expect no more than $24 million returned from the original $527 million investment. Kaiser’s investment firm got $975 million in tax breaks that could cut its future federal income tax bills by a third.
Having a friend in the Oval Office who ignores the law can be quite profitable in the Obama era.
Conn Carroll is a senior writer for the Washington Examiner.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/analysis/stroke-of-a-pen
Day 4 of the Washington Examiner's 10-part series "With the Stroke of a Pen: How Obama abuses executive power to make the law of the land."
Most people who follow the news are aware that President Obama invested $527 million in Solyndra, the now-bankrupt California-based solar panel manufacturing company.
What is much less well-known is that the federal government was legally required to cut its losses of tax dollars just months into the project, and that only an illegal loan modification made to benefit an Obama fundraiser led to taxpayers losing more than $500 million.
“The true engine of economic growth will always be companies like Solyndra,” Obama declared in May 2010, but even then, the company was burning through more than $10 million a month and headed towards bankruptcy.
By December 2010, Solyndra was so cash-poor that it missed a $5 million payment to an Equity Funding Account as required by the firm’s deal with the Energy Department.
The DOE could have canceled the Solyndra loan then and cut the taxpayers’ losses at the $440 million previously disbursed to the company. Instead, DOE told Solyndra the government would “forbear” its right to cancel the contract as long as Solyndra complied with certain federal regulations on compensation for its employees.
At this point, the largest private backer of Solyndra, Argonaut Private Equity (owned by Obama donor George Kaiser of Tulsa, Okla.), demanded that DOE restructure the original loan agreement or they would take the company into bankruptcy.
Kaiser’s demand got the attention of Frances Nwachuku, DOE’s director of portfolio management for the loan programs office. Nwachuku offered to modify the original loan agreement to ensure Argonaut would be the first creditor in line – ahead of U.S. taxpayers – should Solyndra file for bankruptcy.
This type of agreement happens all the time in the private sector. But private-sector financing is not controlled by the Energy Policy Act of 2005.
The DOE’s loan guarantee program is.
Section 1702(d)(3) of that law clearly states, "The obligation shall be subject to the condition that the obligation is not subordinate to other financing."
In other words, the taxpayers must come before any other creditors, which made Nwachuku’s offer illegal. The day after Nwachuku’s offer, DOE Chief Counsel Susan Richardson told DOE General Counsel Scott Blake Harris they needed to talk “as soon as possible.”
DOE also asked its outside counsel, Morrison & Foerster LLP, for its opinion, which described the offer as “prohibited.”
The Office of Management and Budget also concluded that the DOE’s Solyndra loan modification was illegal. On Dec. 14, 2010, OMB analyst Kelly Colyar, formerly the credit policy director at DOE, informed OMB Deputy Associate Director Richard Mertens of a problem “regarding the proposed structure’s compliance with the statutory requirement that the DOE guaranteed debt not be subordinate to other financing.” A Jan. 4, 2011, OMB staff memo said the same thing.
Colyar estimated that if Solyndra was immediately liquidated, taxpayers would only lose $141 million. But if DOE went ahead with the new deal, taxpayers would lose $385 million, due in no small part to the subordination of the taxpayer loan.
Obama’s DOE restricted the Solyndra loan anyway.
In direct opposition to the plain meaning of the statute and OMB guidelines on government contracting, DOE lawyers invented a new legal theory that the ban on subordination applied only at loan origination and was not a “continuing obligation.”
In other words, since the Solyndra restructuring was a loan modification, DOE could do whatever it wanted.
Upon hearing this novel interpretation, OMB Energy Branch Chief Kevin Carroll said the DOE’s reasoning meant “that basically DOE could modify to allow subordination on any loan, at any time, for any reason.”
Kaiser has done well despite Solyndra’s woes. Taxpayers can expect no more than $24 million returned from the original $527 million investment. Kaiser’s investment firm got $975 million in tax breaks that could cut its future federal income tax bills by a third.
Having a friend in the Oval Office who ignores the law can be quite profitable in the Obama era.
Conn Carroll is a senior writer for the Washington Examiner.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/analysis/stroke-of-a-pen
Day 5: Obama rewrote federal education law as Congress napped
By CONN CARROLL | SEPTEMBER 19, 2013 AT 6:34 PM
President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind education law was the largest expansion of federal involvement in elementary education since President Johnson’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.
And the Bush measure was unpopular from day one.
Conservatives never liked the federal government's encroachment into what they viewed as something best left to the states.
Liberals never liked the law's reliance on standardized testing, which education unions hate because it potentially provides a nonsubjective metric for judging the performance of teachers and administrators.
And just about everybody hated the millions of hours of additional paperwork the law inflicted on school administrators.
NCLB required all public schools to establish Adequate Yearly Progress standards and administer statewide standardized tests to make sure those standards were being met.
Each year, a higher and higher percentage of each school district's students had to meet the AYP. So by 2014, 100 percent of all students had to meet each state’s standards for reading and math.
If any school failed to make the statutorily defined standard for two years in a row, then the students at that school would be given an option to transfer to a different school.
If a school continued to fall short of its AYP, it could eventually be closed or turned into a private school. Each year’s failure would bring more and more paperwork and reporting requirements as well.
Congress began trying to change the law in 2007, but Republicans (who want less federal interference in local public schools) could never agree with Democrats (who want more federal interference in local public schools) on how best to rewrite it.
After President Obama was elected in 2008, attention switched from NCLB to Obama’s Race to the Top initiative, which received $4.35 billion in funding under the 2009 economic stimulus.
Where NCLB sought to control schools by cutting off funding, RTTT sought to control them by bribing them with federal grants. Schools that adopted federal Common Core curriculum standards, lifted caps on charter schools and adopted union-approved teacher performance reviews were most likely to be beneficiaries of Obama’s largesse.
But by 2011, Obama’s RTTT-stimulus honey pot had run dry. And more and more school districts were hitting the upper limits of how many of their students they could get to meet their state’s standards.
States were faced with a tough choice: They could either lower their standards so more kids would pass or let the federal government label more of their schools as “failed” under NCLB.
But instead of going to Congress to get NCLB changed, Obama decided to just unilaterally rewrite the law.
On Aug. 5, 2011, Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced he was inviting states to apply for waivers from NCLB, but only if those states could satisfy new criteria. Those criteria just happened to be very similar to Obama’s since-expired RTTT plan.
“The reforms the administration seeks as a condition of granting waivers are the same that it put forward in its Blueprint for reauthorizing NCLB, and that it advanced in its Race to the Top competition,” Brookings Institution Director for Education Policy Russ Whitehurst wrote at the time.
“It is one thing for an administration to grant waivers to states to respond to unrealistic conditions on the ground or to allow experimentation and innovation," Whitehurst continued.
“It is quite another thing to grant state waivers conditional on compliance with a particular reform agenda that is dramatically different from existing law. The NCLB waiver authority does not grant the secretary of education the right to impose any conditions he considers appropriate on states seeking waivers, nor is there any history of such a wholesale executive branch rewrite of federal law through use of the waiver authority.”
But that is exactly what Obama and Duncan did. To date, 44 states have applied for NCLB waivers from the Obama administration and 34 have been granted. And those grants were not easily obtained.
“There is a huge gap between what the states asked for and what they ended up with,” Michael Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute told The Washington Post.
The House of Representatives has since passed a law changing many of NCLB’s draconian federal requirements. But the Senate has not brought the bill for a vote on the Senate floor and Obama has shown no interest in pressuring them to do so.
And why should he? If Obama can rewrite the nation’s education laws without Congress and get away with it, why would he ever ask their opinion on the subject again?
Conn Carroll is a senior editorial writer for the Washington Examiner.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/day-5-obama-rewrote-federal-education-law-as-congress-napped/article/2536111
President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind education law was the largest expansion of federal involvement in elementary education since President Johnson’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.
And the Bush measure was unpopular from day one.
Conservatives never liked the federal government's encroachment into what they viewed as something best left to the states.
Liberals never liked the law's reliance on standardized testing, which education unions hate because it potentially provides a nonsubjective metric for judging the performance of teachers and administrators.
And just about everybody hated the millions of hours of additional paperwork the law inflicted on school administrators.
NCLB required all public schools to establish Adequate Yearly Progress standards and administer statewide standardized tests to make sure those standards were being met.
Each year, a higher and higher percentage of each school district's students had to meet the AYP. So by 2014, 100 percent of all students had to meet each state’s standards for reading and math.
If any school failed to make the statutorily defined standard for two years in a row, then the students at that school would be given an option to transfer to a different school.
If a school continued to fall short of its AYP, it could eventually be closed or turned into a private school. Each year’s failure would bring more and more paperwork and reporting requirements as well.
Congress began trying to change the law in 2007, but Republicans (who want less federal interference in local public schools) could never agree with Democrats (who want more federal interference in local public schools) on how best to rewrite it.
After President Obama was elected in 2008, attention switched from NCLB to Obama’s Race to the Top initiative, which received $4.35 billion in funding under the 2009 economic stimulus.
Where NCLB sought to control schools by cutting off funding, RTTT sought to control them by bribing them with federal grants. Schools that adopted federal Common Core curriculum standards, lifted caps on charter schools and adopted union-approved teacher performance reviews were most likely to be beneficiaries of Obama’s largesse.
But by 2011, Obama’s RTTT-stimulus honey pot had run dry. And more and more school districts were hitting the upper limits of how many of their students they could get to meet their state’s standards.
States were faced with a tough choice: They could either lower their standards so more kids would pass or let the federal government label more of their schools as “failed” under NCLB.
But instead of going to Congress to get NCLB changed, Obama decided to just unilaterally rewrite the law.
On Aug. 5, 2011, Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced he was inviting states to apply for waivers from NCLB, but only if those states could satisfy new criteria. Those criteria just happened to be very similar to Obama’s since-expired RTTT plan.
“The reforms the administration seeks as a condition of granting waivers are the same that it put forward in its Blueprint for reauthorizing NCLB, and that it advanced in its Race to the Top competition,” Brookings Institution Director for Education Policy Russ Whitehurst wrote at the time.
“It is one thing for an administration to grant waivers to states to respond to unrealistic conditions on the ground or to allow experimentation and innovation," Whitehurst continued.
“It is quite another thing to grant state waivers conditional on compliance with a particular reform agenda that is dramatically different from existing law. The NCLB waiver authority does not grant the secretary of education the right to impose any conditions he considers appropriate on states seeking waivers, nor is there any history of such a wholesale executive branch rewrite of federal law through use of the waiver authority.”
But that is exactly what Obama and Duncan did. To date, 44 states have applied for NCLB waivers from the Obama administration and 34 have been granted. And those grants were not easily obtained.
“There is a huge gap between what the states asked for and what they ended up with,” Michael Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute told The Washington Post.
The House of Representatives has since passed a law changing many of NCLB’s draconian federal requirements. But the Senate has not brought the bill for a vote on the Senate floor and Obama has shown no interest in pressuring them to do so.
And why should he? If Obama can rewrite the nation’s education laws without Congress and get away with it, why would he ever ask their opinion on the subject again?
Conn Carroll is a senior editorial writer for the Washington Examiner.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/day-5-obama-rewrote-federal-education-law-as-congress-napped/article/2536111
Day 6: Obama claimed unlimited recess appointment power in NLRB crisis
By CONN CARROLL | SEPTEMBER 23, 2013
National Labor Relations Board officials filed a complaint April 20, 2011, against the Boeing Co., seeking to force the aerospace giant to build new 787 Dreamliners in the forced-unionism state of Washington rather than in its new assembly plant in the right-to-work state of South Carolina.
Boeing had sought to build all the Dreamliners near its existing plant in Puget Sound, but the International Association of Machinists [IAM] refused to agree to a no-strike clause in a new labor contract.
IAM has struck four times since 1989, costing Boeing at least $1.8 billion in revenue.
After a fierce political fight, the NLRB finally dropped its suit on Dec. 9, 2011, but only after Boeing agreed to sign a generous new four-year contract with the IAM, without that sought-after no-strike clause.
President Obama’s appointees on the NLRB had essentially used the power of the federal government to shake down a private company, while also sending a strong signal to all private companies to think twice before creating new jobs in right-to-work states.
Republicans in Congress were livid over Obama’s raw abuse of executive power and vowed to shut down the NLRB.
So when NLRB board member Craig Becker stepped down on Jan. 3, 2012, the Senate refused to approve of any of Obama's new appointments to the board.
As a result, the board could not produce a required quorum, as stated by the National Labor Relations Act, and was thus unable to function.
Obama solved this problem by bypassing the Senate and recess-appointing three new members to the board on Jan. 4. The NLRB then went on with its business as usual.
Unfortunately for Obama, the Senate, according to its own rules, was not in recess, so none of his recess appointments, nor any of the rulings and regulations issued by the recess-appointee NLRB majority, were constitutional.
Multiple firms then sued the NLRB, challenging the legality of Obama’s appointments. And every single federal circuit court that has ruled on the issue has decided against Obama.
The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on the earliest of these cases, Noel Canning vs NLRB, sometime this fall.
Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution reads, “The president shall have power to fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate, by granting commissions which shall expire at the end of their next session.”
Obama argued that since the Senate was only holding “pro forma” sessions every three days, the body was functionally in recess, despite its insistence otherwise, thus giving him the power to makes recess appointments.
But if that were true, then payroll tax extension that passed on Dec. 23, 2011, during one of these Senate pro forma sessions, would also be invalid.
A Senate in recess cannot pass laws. Either the Senate was in session, and the payroll tax is valid, or the Senate was not in session, and Obama’s NLRB recess appointments are invalid. Obama cannot have it both ways
.
In front of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Obama’s Office of Legal Counsel even went so far as to argue that it was completely up to the president’s discretion to decide when the Senate was, and was not, in recess.
Every court that has examined this argument has rejected it. There is no logical end to Obama’s proposed new definition of recess.
If the president can decide when the Senate is, or is not, in session, then he could declare the Senate in recess at the end of every business day. Or even when they broke for lunch, for that matter.
There would never be any need for any Senate consultation of any federal nominee ever again. Any president could install his entire government the day after he was inaugurated, all by “recess” appointment.
That is clearly not what the authors of the Constitution intended when they added the recess clause.
If it was, then why include the Senate "advice and consent" clause at all in the first place?
Conn Carroll is a senior writer for the Washington Examiner. http://washingtonexaminer.com/day-6-obama-claimed-unlimited-recess-appointment-power-in-nlrb-crisis/article/2536219
National Labor Relations Board officials filed a complaint April 20, 2011, against the Boeing Co., seeking to force the aerospace giant to build new 787 Dreamliners in the forced-unionism state of Washington rather than in its new assembly plant in the right-to-work state of South Carolina.
Boeing had sought to build all the Dreamliners near its existing plant in Puget Sound, but the International Association of Machinists [IAM] refused to agree to a no-strike clause in a new labor contract.
IAM has struck four times since 1989, costing Boeing at least $1.8 billion in revenue.
After a fierce political fight, the NLRB finally dropped its suit on Dec. 9, 2011, but only after Boeing agreed to sign a generous new four-year contract with the IAM, without that sought-after no-strike clause.
President Obama’s appointees on the NLRB had essentially used the power of the federal government to shake down a private company, while also sending a strong signal to all private companies to think twice before creating new jobs in right-to-work states.
Republicans in Congress were livid over Obama’s raw abuse of executive power and vowed to shut down the NLRB.
So when NLRB board member Craig Becker stepped down on Jan. 3, 2012, the Senate refused to approve of any of Obama's new appointments to the board.
As a result, the board could not produce a required quorum, as stated by the National Labor Relations Act, and was thus unable to function.
Obama solved this problem by bypassing the Senate and recess-appointing three new members to the board on Jan. 4. The NLRB then went on with its business as usual.
Unfortunately for Obama, the Senate, according to its own rules, was not in recess, so none of his recess appointments, nor any of the rulings and regulations issued by the recess-appointee NLRB majority, were constitutional.
Multiple firms then sued the NLRB, challenging the legality of Obama’s appointments. And every single federal circuit court that has ruled on the issue has decided against Obama.
The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on the earliest of these cases, Noel Canning vs NLRB, sometime this fall.
Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution reads, “The president shall have power to fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate, by granting commissions which shall expire at the end of their next session.”
Obama argued that since the Senate was only holding “pro forma” sessions every three days, the body was functionally in recess, despite its insistence otherwise, thus giving him the power to makes recess appointments.
But if that were true, then payroll tax extension that passed on Dec. 23, 2011, during one of these Senate pro forma sessions, would also be invalid.
A Senate in recess cannot pass laws. Either the Senate was in session, and the payroll tax is valid, or the Senate was not in session, and Obama’s NLRB recess appointments are invalid. Obama cannot have it both ways
.
In front of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Obama’s Office of Legal Counsel even went so far as to argue that it was completely up to the president’s discretion to decide when the Senate was, and was not, in recess.
Every court that has examined this argument has rejected it. There is no logical end to Obama’s proposed new definition of recess.
If the president can decide when the Senate is, or is not, in session, then he could declare the Senate in recess at the end of every business day. Or even when they broke for lunch, for that matter.
There would never be any need for any Senate consultation of any federal nominee ever again. Any president could install his entire government the day after he was inaugurated, all by “recess” appointment.
That is clearly not what the authors of the Constitution intended when they added the recess clause.
If it was, then why include the Senate "advice and consent" clause at all in the first place?
Conn Carroll is a senior writer for the Washington Examiner. http://washingtonexaminer.com/day-6-obama-claimed-unlimited-recess-appointment-power-in-nlrb-crisis/article/2536219
Day 7: Obama refuses to follow the law on nuclear waste
By CONN CARROLL | SEPTEMBER 24, 2013
Analysis: With the Stroke of a Pen
Part seven of the Washington Examiner's 10-part series "With the Stroke of a Pen: How Obama abuses executive power to make the law of the land."
Just months after announcing his candidacy for president of the United States, then-Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., wrote the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2007 seeking to clarify his position on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage project.
“I want every Nevadan to know that I have always opposed using Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository,” he wrote. “States should not be unfairly burdened with waste from other states.”
Problem is, the 1987 amendments to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act directed the U.S. Department of Energy to pursue the Yucca Mountain project as the only nuclear waste-solution projection.
Furthermore, the NWPA also directs the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to make a “final decision approving or disapproving” any application to store waste at Yucca Mountain within three years of its submission.
And, prior to President Obama’s 2009 inauguration, the energy department had submitted an application to the NRC for the Yucca Mountain project.
Unfortunately, since immediately upon entering office, Obama has done everything possible to kill the Yucca project … Everything possible but go to Congress to get the law changed, that is.
First, Obama promoted Gregory Jaczko, a former staffer for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, from NRC commissioner to NRC chairman.
Jaczko, a longtime opponent of Yucca, then began immediately withdrawing all funding from the Yucca project and issued a memo directing DOE to completely terminate the project by December 2009.
Then in March 2010, DOE officially filed a motion with the NRC withdrawing its Yucca application, “with prejudice.”
The “prejudice” legal term of art was included in an effort to preclude any future administrations from ever submitting a Yucca application again.
Those in favor of the project immediately filed opposition to DOE’s motion with the NRC and also took the Obama administration to federal court seeking a court order forcing the government to proceed with the Yucca application.
By Aug. 13 of this year, the NRC still had not ruled on the Yucca Mountain permit, and after several warnings from other courts, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued a “writ of mandamus” forcing the commission to act.
“This case raises significant questions about the scope of the Executive’s authority to disregard federal statutes,” Circuit Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh began the court’s opinion.
“The underlying policy debate is not our concern,” Kavanaugh wrote. “The policy is for Congress and the president to establish as they see fit in enacting statutes, and for the president and subordinate executive agencies (as well as relevant independent agencies such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission) to implement within statutory boundaries.
"Our more modest task is to ensure, in justiciable cases, that agencies comply with the law as it has been set by Congress.”
“Here, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has continued to violate the law governing the Yucca Mountain licensing.
"… Under Article II of the Constitution and relevant Supreme Court precedents, the president must follow statutory mandates so long as there is appropriated money available and the president has no constitutional objection to the statute … the president may not decline to follow a statutory mandate or prohibition simply because of policy objections.”
Despite the Circuit Court’s ruling, however, the Yucca Mountain project appears dead as long as Obama is in office.
Even if the NRC approved the Yucca application, it is abundantly clear that Yucca proponents would need a court order to force Obama’s hand on every step of the process. He has shown zero interest in following the law.
The end result is a nation with no way to dispose of the 2,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel produced by the private sector every year, let alone the 2,500 metric tons produced by the federal government.
Instead, there are now more than 75 storage sites across the country that are not only environmental hazards, but also immensely vulnerable to terrorist attack.
If anything ever happens to the nuclear waste at any of these sites, Obama’s wanton refusal to heed the law will be solely to blame.
Conn Carroll is a senior writer with the Washington Examiner.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/day-7-obama-refuses-to-follow-the-law-on-nuclear-waste/article/2536277
Analysis: With the Stroke of a Pen
Part seven of the Washington Examiner's 10-part series "With the Stroke of a Pen: How Obama abuses executive power to make the law of the land."
Just months after announcing his candidacy for president of the United States, then-Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., wrote the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2007 seeking to clarify his position on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage project.
“I want every Nevadan to know that I have always opposed using Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository,” he wrote. “States should not be unfairly burdened with waste from other states.”
Problem is, the 1987 amendments to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act directed the U.S. Department of Energy to pursue the Yucca Mountain project as the only nuclear waste-solution projection.
Furthermore, the NWPA also directs the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to make a “final decision approving or disapproving” any application to store waste at Yucca Mountain within three years of its submission.
And, prior to President Obama’s 2009 inauguration, the energy department had submitted an application to the NRC for the Yucca Mountain project.
Unfortunately, since immediately upon entering office, Obama has done everything possible to kill the Yucca project … Everything possible but go to Congress to get the law changed, that is.
First, Obama promoted Gregory Jaczko, a former staffer for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, from NRC commissioner to NRC chairman.
Jaczko, a longtime opponent of Yucca, then began immediately withdrawing all funding from the Yucca project and issued a memo directing DOE to completely terminate the project by December 2009.
Then in March 2010, DOE officially filed a motion with the NRC withdrawing its Yucca application, “with prejudice.”
The “prejudice” legal term of art was included in an effort to preclude any future administrations from ever submitting a Yucca application again.
Those in favor of the project immediately filed opposition to DOE’s motion with the NRC and also took the Obama administration to federal court seeking a court order forcing the government to proceed with the Yucca application.
By Aug. 13 of this year, the NRC still had not ruled on the Yucca Mountain permit, and after several warnings from other courts, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued a “writ of mandamus” forcing the commission to act.
“This case raises significant questions about the scope of the Executive’s authority to disregard federal statutes,” Circuit Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh began the court’s opinion.
“The underlying policy debate is not our concern,” Kavanaugh wrote. “The policy is for Congress and the president to establish as they see fit in enacting statutes, and for the president and subordinate executive agencies (as well as relevant independent agencies such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission) to implement within statutory boundaries.
"Our more modest task is to ensure, in justiciable cases, that agencies comply with the law as it has been set by Congress.”
“Here, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has continued to violate the law governing the Yucca Mountain licensing.
"… Under Article II of the Constitution and relevant Supreme Court precedents, the president must follow statutory mandates so long as there is appropriated money available and the president has no constitutional objection to the statute … the president may not decline to follow a statutory mandate or prohibition simply because of policy objections.”
Despite the Circuit Court’s ruling, however, the Yucca Mountain project appears dead as long as Obama is in office.
Even if the NRC approved the Yucca application, it is abundantly clear that Yucca proponents would need a court order to force Obama’s hand on every step of the process. He has shown zero interest in following the law.
The end result is a nation with no way to dispose of the 2,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel produced by the private sector every year, let alone the 2,500 metric tons produced by the federal government.
Instead, there are now more than 75 storage sites across the country that are not only environmental hazards, but also immensely vulnerable to terrorist attack.
If anything ever happens to the nuclear waste at any of these sites, Obama’s wanton refusal to heed the law will be solely to blame.
Conn Carroll is a senior writer with the Washington Examiner.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/day-7-obama-refuses-to-follow-the-law-on-nuclear-waste/article/2536277
Day 8: Obama edict repealed 1996 welfare reform's work requirement
By CONN CARROLL | SEPTEMBER 25, 2013
Part eight of the Washington Examiner's 10-part series "With the Stroke of a Pen: How Obama abuses executive power to make the law of the land."
There were plenty of reasons why President Obama’s $787 trillion economic stimulus bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, received no Republican votes in the House of Representatives.
But one rarely mentioned reason was tucked away in the more than 1,000 pages of crony capitalist spending -- a provision ending the work requirement for the food stamp program.
When the Republican Congress and Democratic President Bill Clinton reformed welfare in 1996, among the many changes was to add a work requirement to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, more commonly known as food stamps.
Liberals always hated the work requirement, and the stimulus was a perfect opportunity to repeal it. The results have been entirely predictable. A 2012 Congressional Research Service report found that the number of able-bodied American adults on food stamps has more than doubled, from 1.9 million in 2008 to 3.9 million in 2010.
The number of Americans receiving food stamps has continued to rise, even though the Obama economy is, supposedly, in recovery. In May 2009, less than 36 million Americans were on food stamps, compared to 48 million today.
But Obama was not satisfied with rolling back the work requirement just for the food stamp program. On July 12, 2012, the Department of Health and Human Services issued an “information memorandum” inviting states to apply for waivers to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program.
Buried in that memo was a single paragraph functionally gutting the federal welfare system’s overall work requirement.
The old Aid to Families with Dependent Children program also had nominal work requirements. But thanks to pages and pages of loopholes in the statute, any governor could use those loopholes to evade the work requirement.
The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act changed all that by vastly simplifying what did, and did not, qualify as “work” for welfare’s work requirement.
It also set strict new work-participation rates for states that, if not met, would lead to reduced federal funding. It was these strict new welfare-to-work requirements that the Left always hated.
Congressional Republicans mistrusted President Clinton on the issue, and they knew future Democratic presidents would try to water down the welfare work requirements.
So they put the definition of “work activities” for determining welfare eligibility in a separate section of the bill, Section 407, and explicitly said that Section 407 could not be waived.
But that is exactly what the Obama welfare memo did. It claimed that Section 1115 of the welfare reform law, a section granting the HHS secretary the power to grant waivers for state “demonstration projects,” also empowered waiving Section 407.
Notably absent from Section 1115's list of sections of the welfare reform law that the HHS secretary may waive is Section 407.
Once Section 407 was killed, states were free to redefine “work” under the welfare law. In the past, states have successfully labeled such activities as “personal journaling,” “motivational reading” and “weightless promotion” as “work,” thus allowing them to receive full federal funding without actually getting anyone off welfare and into a job. If the Obama welfare memo stands, the 1996 welfare reform law will have been repealed by executive fiat.
And perhaps welfare reform should be undone ... or at least the welfare-to-work requirements should be delayed until the U.S. economy actually recovers and the unemployment rate falls below 5 percent.
But if those changes should be made, they should be made, legally, through Congress, not by Obama’s discretion alone.
Conn Carroll is a senior writer for the Washington Examiner.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/obama-edict-repealed-1996-welfare-reforms-work-requirement/article/2536341
Part eight of the Washington Examiner's 10-part series "With the Stroke of a Pen: How Obama abuses executive power to make the law of the land."
There were plenty of reasons why President Obama’s $787 trillion economic stimulus bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, received no Republican votes in the House of Representatives.
But one rarely mentioned reason was tucked away in the more than 1,000 pages of crony capitalist spending -- a provision ending the work requirement for the food stamp program.
When the Republican Congress and Democratic President Bill Clinton reformed welfare in 1996, among the many changes was to add a work requirement to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, more commonly known as food stamps.
Liberals always hated the work requirement, and the stimulus was a perfect opportunity to repeal it. The results have been entirely predictable. A 2012 Congressional Research Service report found that the number of able-bodied American adults on food stamps has more than doubled, from 1.9 million in 2008 to 3.9 million in 2010.
The number of Americans receiving food stamps has continued to rise, even though the Obama economy is, supposedly, in recovery. In May 2009, less than 36 million Americans were on food stamps, compared to 48 million today.
But Obama was not satisfied with rolling back the work requirement just for the food stamp program. On July 12, 2012, the Department of Health and Human Services issued an “information memorandum” inviting states to apply for waivers to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program.
Buried in that memo was a single paragraph functionally gutting the federal welfare system’s overall work requirement.
The old Aid to Families with Dependent Children program also had nominal work requirements. But thanks to pages and pages of loopholes in the statute, any governor could use those loopholes to evade the work requirement.
The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act changed all that by vastly simplifying what did, and did not, qualify as “work” for welfare’s work requirement.
It also set strict new work-participation rates for states that, if not met, would lead to reduced federal funding. It was these strict new welfare-to-work requirements that the Left always hated.
Congressional Republicans mistrusted President Clinton on the issue, and they knew future Democratic presidents would try to water down the welfare work requirements.
So they put the definition of “work activities” for determining welfare eligibility in a separate section of the bill, Section 407, and explicitly said that Section 407 could not be waived.
But that is exactly what the Obama welfare memo did. It claimed that Section 1115 of the welfare reform law, a section granting the HHS secretary the power to grant waivers for state “demonstration projects,” also empowered waiving Section 407.
Notably absent from Section 1115's list of sections of the welfare reform law that the HHS secretary may waive is Section 407.
Once Section 407 was killed, states were free to redefine “work” under the welfare law. In the past, states have successfully labeled such activities as “personal journaling,” “motivational reading” and “weightless promotion” as “work,” thus allowing them to receive full federal funding without actually getting anyone off welfare and into a job. If the Obama welfare memo stands, the 1996 welfare reform law will have been repealed by executive fiat.
And perhaps welfare reform should be undone ... or at least the welfare-to-work requirements should be delayed until the U.S. economy actually recovers and the unemployment rate falls below 5 percent.
But if those changes should be made, they should be made, legally, through Congress, not by Obama’s discretion alone.
Conn Carroll is a senior writer for the Washington Examiner.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/obama-edict-repealed-1996-welfare-reforms-work-requirement/article/2536341
Day 9: Obama repeatedly defied federal court with Gulf oil policies
By CONN CARROLL | SEPTEMBER 26, 2013
Analysis: With the Stroke of a Pen
Part nine of the Washington Examiner's 10-part series "With the Stroke of a Pen: How Obama abuses executive power to make the law of the land."
In 2004, then-Illinois Senate candidate Barack Obama told the League of Conservation Voters: “I believe that existing policies are imbalanced in favor of new and increased [oil and gas] extraction. ... Reduced energy demand would eliminate the need for new production on federal public lands, and I would oppose such production in any event.”
Jacking up oil prices by ending energy production on federal lands has long been a top priority for liberal Democrats and their Big Green environmental movement backers.
So when the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil drilling rig exploded on April 20, 2010, President Obama wasted little time before shutting down all drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
On April 30, 2010, Obama ordered a temporary ban on all new oil and gas leases in the region and asked Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to produce a report with further recommendations.
On May 28, 2010, Salazar produced the report, and in it he recommended a new six-month ban on offshore drilling in the Gulf, a recommendation Salazar immediately put in force. That recommendation was purportedly based on nothing but the best peer-reviewed sound science.
But it turned out Salazar’s report was a lie. According to a later report from the Interior Department Inspector General, White House energy czar Carol Browner unilaterally changed the language in the report to suggest that a seven-member panel of outside scientific experts all endorsed the moratorium.
That claim was false. The Obama administration was caught making up the “science” it wanted to fit the policy outcome it desired.
Even before Obama’s White House was caught manipulating that science, oil firms operating in the Gulf sued Obama in federal court to overturn his drilling ban.
After reviewing the facts and science in the case, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana found that Obama’s drilling ban was an “arbitrary and capricious” abuse of executive authority, and ordered the ban overturned.
But instead of following the law and allowing Gulf drilling to resume, Obama doubled down, issuing a new moratorium featuring minor technical changes from the first.
The second Obama drilling moratorium applied for the exact same length of time as the first moratorium, through Nov. 30, 2010.
But after intense bipartisan political pressure from Louisiana Sens. David Vitter, a Republican, and Mary Landrieu, a Democrat, Obama nominally lifted the moratorium on Oct. 12, 2010.
By that time about 36 rigs in the Gulf of Mexico had been put out of work, five rigs were being transferred to Egypt and other parts of Africa, and 12,000 jobs had been lost.
Energy industry experts predicted that if new oil leases were not issued, the long-term and indirect economic losses would include more than 175,000 jobs in the region.
But even though the Obama the moratorium had been nominally lifted, a functional ban remained because the Interior Department refused to issue any new drilling permits.
So oil companies again took Obama to federal court, this time seeking an order holding the chief executive in contempt of court and asking that the government pay all of their legal fees.
Again, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana ruled against Obama, finding him in contempt of court for “a flagrant and continuous disregard of the Court’s Order.”
Finally, on Feb. 28, 2011, almost a month after he had been found in contempt, Obama granted the first oil lease in the Gulf of Mexico.
But while the Interior Department has since stepped up the pace of issuing leasing permits, Gulf oil production is still far below pre-Deepwater Horizon levels.
The month before the blowout, according to the Energy Information Administration, oil companies were pumping 1.6 million barrels of oil a day out of the Gulf.
Today they are pumping just 1.07 million barrels a day, a 33 percent drop in production.
All told, according to a 2012 American Petroleum Institute study, Obama’s Gulf oil drilling moratorium cost the United States more than $24 billion in lost energy investments and about 90,000 jobs.
Those losses make the $440,596.68 in legal fees the Eastern District forced Obama to pay the oil companies for defying its court order seem like a drop in the bucket.
Conn Carroll is a senior editorial writer for the Washington Examiner.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/day-9-obama-repeatedly-defied-federal-court-with-gulf-oil-policies/article/2536401
Analysis: With the Stroke of a Pen
Part nine of the Washington Examiner's 10-part series "With the Stroke of a Pen: How Obama abuses executive power to make the law of the land."
In 2004, then-Illinois Senate candidate Barack Obama told the League of Conservation Voters: “I believe that existing policies are imbalanced in favor of new and increased [oil and gas] extraction. ... Reduced energy demand would eliminate the need for new production on federal public lands, and I would oppose such production in any event.”
Jacking up oil prices by ending energy production on federal lands has long been a top priority for liberal Democrats and their Big Green environmental movement backers.
So when the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil drilling rig exploded on April 20, 2010, President Obama wasted little time before shutting down all drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
On April 30, 2010, Obama ordered a temporary ban on all new oil and gas leases in the region and asked Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to produce a report with further recommendations.
On May 28, 2010, Salazar produced the report, and in it he recommended a new six-month ban on offshore drilling in the Gulf, a recommendation Salazar immediately put in force. That recommendation was purportedly based on nothing but the best peer-reviewed sound science.
But it turned out Salazar’s report was a lie. According to a later report from the Interior Department Inspector General, White House energy czar Carol Browner unilaterally changed the language in the report to suggest that a seven-member panel of outside scientific experts all endorsed the moratorium.
That claim was false. The Obama administration was caught making up the “science” it wanted to fit the policy outcome it desired.
Even before Obama’s White House was caught manipulating that science, oil firms operating in the Gulf sued Obama in federal court to overturn his drilling ban.
After reviewing the facts and science in the case, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana found that Obama’s drilling ban was an “arbitrary and capricious” abuse of executive authority, and ordered the ban overturned.
But instead of following the law and allowing Gulf drilling to resume, Obama doubled down, issuing a new moratorium featuring minor technical changes from the first.
The second Obama drilling moratorium applied for the exact same length of time as the first moratorium, through Nov. 30, 2010.
But after intense bipartisan political pressure from Louisiana Sens. David Vitter, a Republican, and Mary Landrieu, a Democrat, Obama nominally lifted the moratorium on Oct. 12, 2010.
By that time about 36 rigs in the Gulf of Mexico had been put out of work, five rigs were being transferred to Egypt and other parts of Africa, and 12,000 jobs had been lost.
Energy industry experts predicted that if new oil leases were not issued, the long-term and indirect economic losses would include more than 175,000 jobs in the region.
But even though the Obama the moratorium had been nominally lifted, a functional ban remained because the Interior Department refused to issue any new drilling permits.
So oil companies again took Obama to federal court, this time seeking an order holding the chief executive in contempt of court and asking that the government pay all of their legal fees.
Again, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana ruled against Obama, finding him in contempt of court for “a flagrant and continuous disregard of the Court’s Order.”
Finally, on Feb. 28, 2011, almost a month after he had been found in contempt, Obama granted the first oil lease in the Gulf of Mexico.
But while the Interior Department has since stepped up the pace of issuing leasing permits, Gulf oil production is still far below pre-Deepwater Horizon levels.
The month before the blowout, according to the Energy Information Administration, oil companies were pumping 1.6 million barrels of oil a day out of the Gulf.
Today they are pumping just 1.07 million barrels a day, a 33 percent drop in production.
All told, according to a 2012 American Petroleum Institute study, Obama’s Gulf oil drilling moratorium cost the United States more than $24 billion in lost energy investments and about 90,000 jobs.
Those losses make the $440,596.68 in legal fees the Eastern District forced Obama to pay the oil companies for defying its court order seem like a drop in the bucket.
Conn Carroll is a senior editorial writer for the Washington Examiner.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/day-9-obama-repeatedly-defied-federal-court-with-gulf-oil-policies/article/2536401