Obama's Power Grab
Creators Syndicate ^ | December 7, 2012 | Betsy Mccaughey
President Obama went over the constitutional cliff this week, demanding more power than the U.S. Constitution allows any president to have. All Americans — regardless of party affiliation — should shudder at the president's attempted power grab and say no. Compromising on taxes and spending is fine, but not on the nation's bedrock principles.
To avert the so-called fiscal cliff on Jan. 1, 2013, Obama is insisting that House Republicans hand over to him Congress's authority to raise the debt ceiling. Obama is demanding a power no other president has ever had — to borrow without congressional prior approval. Under Obama's scheme, Congress would have to muster a veto-proof 2/3 majority in each house, an unlikely feat, to stop the borrowing. Obama's demand would put him in the driver's seat (instead of Congress) with no speed limit.
All 43 presidents before Barack Obama had to get Congress's approval. There's a reason. When government borrows, We the People have to pay it back. Allowing a president to borrow without Congress's consent would be no different from allowing a president to tax us without Congress's consent. The Constitution's framers saw that in Europe, monarchs borrowed and spent to aggrandize their own power, dooming the populace to repay the debt.
To prevent that, the framers allowed only Congress, the branch of government closest to the people, to borrow. (Article 1, Sect. 8). Obama's audacious proposal violates that provision. Yet he doubled down on it on Dec. 5, telling the Business Roundtable that negotiating with Congress "is not a game I will play." Sorry, Mr. President, but negotiating with Congress is precisely what the Constitution requires you to do.
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