Posted on 11/18/2010 10:10:08 AM PST by My Favorite Headache
The liberal Center for American Progress doesn’t believe significant GOP gains in the House and Senate should stop the President from implementing more of his polices. The group released a report Tuesday suggesting ways Obama can bypass Congress to accomplish a progressive agenda, and it cites the president’s power as commander-in-chief to make its point.
“I think most of the conversation since the election has been about how President Obama adjusts to the new situation on Capitol Hill,” Center for American Progress head and former Bill Clinton Chief of Staff John Podesta told the Daily Caller. “While that’s an important conversation, it simply ignores the president’s ability to use all levels of his power and authority to move the country forward.”
How does one “move the country forward”? In the center’s report, Podesta explains that Obama can use executive orders, rulemaking, and even the armed forces “to accomplish important change” and that such means “should not be underestimated.”
What exactly does Podesta think the president should use such powers to “accomplish”? Among others, the report suggests “job creation,“ ”quality affordable health care,“ ”sustainable security,“ and ”a clean energy future.”
The report cites specific goals such as mitigating the effects of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, supporting a Palestinian state, and reducing greenhouse gasses by 17 percent by 2020.
“The U.S. Constitution and the laws of our nation grant the president significant authority to make and implement policy,” Podesta writes. ”Congressional gridlock does not mean the federal government stands still.”
Statement from John D. Podesta November 15, 2010
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. Predictions of stalemate abound. And some debate whether the administration should tack to the left or to the center and compromise with or confront the new House leadership.
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 on a host of pressing challenges of importance to the public and our economy. Progress, not positioning, is what the public wants and deserves.
The U.S. Constitution and the laws of our nation grant the president significant authority to make and implement policy. These authorities can be used to ensure positive progress on many of the key issues facing the country through:
* Executive orders * Rulemaking * Agency management * Convening and creating public-private partnerships * Commanding the armed forces * Diplomacy
The ability of President Obama to accomplish important change through these powers should not be underestimated. President Bush, for example, faced a divided Congress throughout most of his term in office, yet few can doubt his ability to craft a unique and deeply conservative agenda using every aspect of the policymaking apparatus at his disposal. And, after his party lost control of Congress in 1994, President Clinton used executive authority and convening power to make significant progressive change. For instance, he protected more great spaces in the lower 48 states than any president since Theodore Roosevelt, established for the first time significant protections for Americans’ medical privacy, and urged the creation of the Welfare-to-Work Partnership that enlisted the help of 20,000 businesses in moving more than 1 million welfare recipients into the workforce.
The upshot: Congressional gridlock does not mean the federal government stands still. This administration has a similar opportunity to use available executive authorities while also working with Congress where possible. At the Center for American Progress, we look forward to our nation continuing to make progress.
Read the full report (pdf)
Download the executive summary (pdf)
Download the report to e-readers and mobile devices from Scribd
To speak with our experts on this topic, please contact:
Print: Megan Smith (health care, education, economic policy) 202.741.6346 or msmith@americanprogress.org
Print: Anna Soellner (foreign policy and security, energy) asoellner@americanprogress.org
Print: Raúl Arce-Contreras (ethnic media, immigration) 202.478.5318 or rarcecontreras@americanprogress.org
Radio: Laura Pereyra 202.741.6258 or lpereyra@americanprogress.org
TV: Andrea Purse 202.741.6250 or apurse@americanprogress.org
Web: Erin Lindsay 202.741.6397 or elindsay@americanprogress.org http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/11/executive_orders.html/#statement
I don’t think it is healthy for you to think this is true of our military. They will turn against us if ordered to do so. The brass and media will make us into worse than terrorists in their minds. It will be us against the Obama’s military and we are being stupid to think or plan otherwise.
Although Beck is being a tad more honest than any other reporter, he is being mild in what he is saying. He’s not crying all the time for nothing.
Placemark to read tomorrow.
I don’t have much longer left in the military so I doubt that day will come where I have to make that difficult decision. I am a member of Oath Keepers and have already decided not to, and there are a number of politically aware pro-freedom men and women in both enlisted and officer ranks who I could see refusing to carry out domestic policing orders. However what I’ve been posting is don’t count on the majority of the military deciding this; the majority will go along with being told to gear up and assist law enforcement on our own streets by providing a public visual deterrence. The real danger comes from the local, state, and federal LE agencies, if such a serious constitutional violation ever actually occurs that we’re discussing here, but the military would be complicit by allowing itself to assist by flexing its muscle without having to actually use it, or using it in a limited sense such as cordoning off security around a neighborhood while LE tactical teams clear target houses for whatever purpose they’ve been sent. Just like the Hurricane Katrina incident and the role the National Guard played, as another FReeper already pointed out.
Don't mess with the Air Force, you might have better luck with the army...:O)
This situation will be wholely different than the Katrina disaster. Americans are going to be outraged if Obama pulls this crap. It will be a big armed and dangerous town hall meeting and war protest all in one. The police and military are going to have to kill a lot of people and some of them are going to die, too. That’s my guess of what will happen in Bamster becomes Soros’ Lenin. We ain’t peasants in Cuba.
I obviously differ in opinion as to how such as scenario would play out if it actually does happen, but in the end your guess is as good as mine. No telling what surprised lie ahead of us down the road.
Sorry about the typos.
Don’t worry about foil. We must report whatever we observe.
If Obama tries this the tanks will roll on the White House and he and Congress will be arrested and detained while a Junta of Generals and Admirals rule—until new elections could be called. President Petraus has a nice ring to it.
Except he'd be on the wrong, and LOSING, side.
Moving our country backwards would cause us to eventually reach "The Greatest Generation".
;-)
!!!!
We'll call you when we need a few aero bus drivers, but until then, the F/A-18s of the good ol' USN or USMC will do!
“Podesta is a crook if he is encouraging 0bama to circumvent the Constitution!” Obama has been trying to circumvent the Constitution since he first decided to run for President and cover up the fact that he is not eligible. Turning the military loose on us would not be a difficult decision for Barry. After all he is only trying to achieve Social Justice for us.
I agree with you. Re-read my posts.
In 1776 the patriots were fighting a government 3,000 miles away and they were more or less equally armed. That’s a lot different from fighting a local tyrant with almost half the people supporting him and another third clueless.
We win with brave politicians. Saying that and realizing who we’re dependent upon for relief is very scary. We’ve practially already defeated.
A couple years back my nephew/godson was telling me why he likes the military, and he talked about how apolitical it is. His dad was a navy officer/pilot for quite a while so my sister had talked to me about the politics involved, and I had also just done quite a bit of research into the Able Danger thing, so I couldn’t help but think that my nephew was going to have a rude awakening.
It’s sort of like the rude awakening I had with the church also. I grew up #9 of 12 kids in a small dual-parish church made mostly of farmers like my family. We learned to get along because we had to and were just glad if we had a pastor at all. We never thought of the pastor as being different from anybody else. So it was a shock when I became engaged to a seminarian and he wanted me to read a book about divorce in the parsonage, concentrating on problems unique to pastors’ families largely because of the politics that go on in the church. I thought, “Geez, some people sure have a messiah complex. Why do pastors think they’re so different from everybody else?”
Suffice it to say that the book knew whereof it spoke. The congregation we’re at right now has been political to the point that it’s basically just the grace of God that I’m still alive and our family is intact.
Our first parish was a dual congregation, small-town, and it was literally like a family to us. Within one week I had gone to the hospital at 42 weeks to induce labor, our daughter had died during monitoring, I had given birth, we had buried our daughter, we had moved to another state, and my husband began the ministry. Those people embraced us with open arms and carried us through. I think they ministered more to us than we to them, but we gave them everything we had. They loved us through the birth of our first 3 living children, a miscarriage, and the beginning of a pregnancy the doctor initially told me was hopeless (she is now my snuggly 10-year-old). There was some politics there but it was small compared to the good-hearted people who really cared for each other - good, salt of the earth Minnesotans. Uff-dah. lol
Then we moved back to Nebraska, the good life. (And Nebraska is a great place to live, so don’t get me wrong.) Wow, what a change. There are some wonderful people here but politics like I had never had to deal with before. My world was literally thrown upside-down. There was just no place for me at all. I spent more and more time on the computer just because there was room for me there, and I could talk about things that mattered to me - the God stuff and the assault on the Constitution. But it really took a toll on the family so I got away from it and poured myself into home improvement. But I wondered what I was even still on earth for, if trying to impact my world was forbidden to me.
At one of the lowest points a friend - a military guy - said something that enabled me to communicate to my husband where I was at and what I needed. This military guy talked about the different levels of alertness in law enforcement and military. He said white is just normal. Yellow is where your suspicions are aroused, like if you’re patrolling or there’s something fishy going on. Red is full-out battle, where it’s either you and everything you love survives or the enemy survives. And black is when you’re at peace.
The Bible study we were doing was actually about peace so I asked him if the goal, then, was black because then you were at peace. He said, “Nellie, if you go black you’re dead. Black is to give up and accept the loss of everything you love.”
It was like he had looked into my soul and read me like an open book. I went home and explained to my husband what Dave had said and explained that I was tottering between red and black, from one moment to the next, and that even though he hates that I’m a fighter, at this point the only option instead of red is black. If I’m fighting at least I’m alive.
He had seen me go through some pretty serious panic attacks so he knew I wasn’t just bluffing, and he knew I had spent a couple hours at the doctor’s office because the doctor was deciding whether to let me go home. He decided I’d be better off red than dead. lol. Where red is MILITARY red - actually fighting communism and the decay of our freedom.
I struggle to find balance between the immediate family needs and the bigger, long-term picture (both earthly and eternal). And we go around about whether the potential gain is worth the risk in what I’ve been doing. Struggle over whether anything we the people do will actually make any real difference in the long run. The same kinds of stuff people process here a lot - and especially as we see the Obama regime attacking so much infrastructure.
As long as I can fight without jeopardizing his ministry he understands that it’s what I have to do. I would love to go back to building shelves and making quilts, but if I do it while the battle is still so thick it will be because I’ve gone black, not because the threat was conquered and the alertness subsides back to yellow and then white. I hope we can get back to the yellow zone someday, but as long as we’re in the red zone I have to fight. Only God knows who wins this particular earthly battle, whether freedom or oppression. But as long as I’m alive and the battle rages I have to fight for what I love even while taking time to also love what I love.
And speaking of that, my 10-year-old who was sick in the night really wants a little snuggle time. So I’d better go do that.
What do you mean by “picket ship tactics”? In your experience with the navy, did they talk about communism and Islamism at all, and how those enemies plan to defeat us by acting as domestic enemies within the command structure, government, and/or critical American infrastructure? Do they really try to know the enemy, and be aware of our vulnerabilities?
I look at Nidal Hasan and think that somebody really screwed up there - as if they had no clue of the tactics of the enemy or the danger of the PC garbage. I look at Able Danger and see the same thing. And now the DADT stuff, disarmament, Lakin, etc... it’s just scary to me because I don’t know if what Dave told me about the military having contingency plans to cover everything is really true. Seems like they’re ignoring this PC/domestic enemy elephant in the room even while it makes hay out of our security.
Sorry this is so long.
Don’t worry, Our military won’t... They know who they serve and where the loyalties to the constitution ought to be. Americans need to fear the U.N. and other countries troops more than their own. Afterall, Soldier s are patriots and will challenge a bullsh!# order like this.
Really? Soldiers are ordered into combat. Civilians are not. Ordering a soldier to risk his life is constitutional. Ordering a civilian to engage an enemy in combat is not.
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