For whatever reasons, Congress for more than a half century has idly stood by and allowed the president and the executive branch to legislate, creating law by the simple expedient of Executive Orders and regulations established by executive agencies.
Nothing in the Constitution permits the president to make law under any circumstances. Nor is there any provision allowing Congress to delegate to some government agency their power to make laws. But they continue to do it quite literally every day.
What we are seeing in our Capitol is the modern equivalent of what happened to the Roman Senate as executive power slipped from the consuls to the Caesars, who treated the Senate as their legislative rubber stamp..
Part of the resulting problem today is rule by bureaucrats who are unaccountable to the voter and often so powerful --- as with the IRS --- that even Congressmen stand in fear of them. Some federal agencies have become virtually a law unto themselves. Notable and perhaps infamous in this respect are the CIA, IRS, FBI and BATF.
Most dangerous to the preservation of our Constitution, however, is the presidential executive order. Published daily in the Federal Register are regulations and executive orders that have come down from the executive branch of government. It sums to about 70,000 pages per year. Under Presidents Bush and Clinton this interlocking web of Executive Orders has established the basis for government by presidential fiat. A tyranny, if you will. All the president need do is issue the decree that puts dictatorship in place.
Once published, these orders and regulations are effectively powerless for thirty days. During this period, a congressman can file an objection, and require justification, or Congress can nullify it. However, nobody in Congress pays attention. Who wants to read 70,000 pages of bureaucratic jargon every year? So, after the thirty days the published orders and regulations gain the status of law. There are 12,000 or so such "laws" on the Register right now.
And you thought only Congress could make laws?
Grand daddy of all Executive Orders is No. 11921, published June 1976 and many times updated since by all the presidents since Jimmy Carter. This Order gives the sitting president the power to nullify the Constitution and all its restraints on government by the simple expedient of declaring a national emergency. As George Knoblauch, a well-known critic of governmental excesses, comments, such a declaration allows the government to "..take over every form of newspaper, radio and television stations. They will confiscate your CBs, weapons, tell you where to live, work, how much food you can have, establish rationing and price controls."
The Order states: "WHEREAS our national security is dependent upon our ability to assure continuity of government at every level, in any national emergency type situation that might conceivably confront the nation...." In short, the president can unilaterally decide if "any national emergency" exists, unilaterally invoke the terms of the order, and Congress has no power to do anything about it as things now stand. This was the same instrument used by Franklin Roosevelt when he closed the banks and confiscated gold and gold-backed currency in 1933. Bill Clinton used it in April of 1998 to further the nullification of the Second Amendment by outlawing importation of a class of semi-automatic firearms.
Any Congressman who asks for your vote should be required by you to commit to restoring the integrity of the Constitution's separation of powers. Add to that the restoration of the Congressional prerogative to declare war or to commit troops to anything but an immediate, short-term response to an unfriendly act by a foreign force that threatens our national security or our citizens. And, eventually, Congress has to take back its authority to regulate the coin of the realm. The private bankers, mostly European, who manage our money have made a humongous mess of it over the past eighty five years. And they are sticking us with the bill.
Bill Bonville
Addendum to "Executive Orders"
Presidential Decision Directives as Confirmation of the tyranny in place (from the Free Congress Foundation; dated near the conclusion of the Clionton administration.).
"I think the evidence would show that Clinton's used [executive orders] much more [than past Presidents], plus he's used this new thing called a Presidential Decision Directive - PDDs. These are sort of a new form of executive order that actually do not just tell federal agencies what to do to carry out their duties, but actually make policy and commit resources," said Cliff Kincaid, journalist, author, and director of the American Sovereignty Action Project, appearing on the Free Congress Foundation's "Endangered Liberties."
Kincaid continued, "I've got one right here on implementing the Clinton administration's pro-UN policy - putting our troops under foreign command. This is quite extraordinary. This is called Presidential Decision Directive 25 (issued in May of 1994), and it is still secret to this day. The Congress does not even have a copy of it! All we have is actually a sanitized version, a public version, and who knows what is really in the fine print, [and] what has been withheld."
What are PDDs? Kincaid said, "These have a history dating back to the early 1960s. There's been over a thousand PDDs issued, as far as executive orders are concerned. Now these supposedly are designed just to tell federal agencies what to do, not to make policy, but to carry out policy. They are implied in the President's executive powers. The problem comes when these are issued to make policy, basically to make law. And I've got one right here, Executive Order number 12986.
Now that suggests to me that we've already had almost 13,000 executive orders. Some of these we may not even know the details of. Some of the Presidential Decision Directives are still, as I say, classified - secret to this day.... We've got a Congress here that's sitting back as Clinton issues these Presidential Decision Directives and executive orders willy-nilly, and all they can come up with is maybe we ought to pass a law to find out how many there are and to list them all. This is absolutely ridiculous.
The Congress has given up its power. The President is abusing his own power. And maybe he's going to make a situation even worse by issuing pardons for some of his fellow convicts."
Contact: Cliff Kincaid @ American Sovereignty Action Project; 301.855.2679