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Obama’s Pen vs. the Constitution
Barack Obama has revealed that he unilaterally plans to use executive orders to “bypass” Congress. His shocking words were: “We are not just going to be waiting for legislation. . . . I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone. And I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions.”
I hope every American actually sees Obama speak those words on a TV or computer screen. His dictatorial attitude, layered with arrogance and condescension, should be repudiated — if we are still a self-governing people.
Obama claims to have taught constitutional law but he doesn’t seem to be familiar with the Constitution’s words. Lost in his shuffle are “all legislative powers” are vested in Congress, and the President “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”
He refused to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act (overwhelmingly passed by Congress and signed by President Clinton). He used his now-famous pen to wipe out key sections of the 1996 bipartisan Welfare Reform law, and of Obamacare (which his appointees repeatedly bragged is “the law of the land”), and to “legislate” the Dream Act which Congress refused to enact.
The Mainstream Media, the Obama Democrats, the Chamber of Commerce, and Establishment globalist Republicans are demanding that Congress pass immigration “reform.” But reform is a code word for the amnesty that is now being debated as well as for admitting and granting citizenship to millions of foreigners, both illegal and legal. The published public opinion polls, however, conclusively prove that the American people do not want any form of amnesty or so-called “reform” that is being discussed. They want the border closed before we even talk about anything else. Period.
And the American people believe that whatever caveats are written into the law by Congress will be ignored, misrepresented, or voided by Barack Obama with his famous pen.
Conservatives believe in limiting the power of government to control our lives and spend our money. It is obvious from the corroborative results of widespread polling of illegal aliens and recent immigrants that a significant majority supports big government providing more services. It’s no surprise that they vote overwhelmingly for bigger government services such as Obamacare. It will be difficult, even next to impossible, to maintain a society of limited government if we bring in millions of persons unfamiliar with and even hostile to our unique American system. Amnesty is, indeed, suicide for the conservative movement and the Republican Party.
All are invited to read Eagle Forum’s 43-page report called How Mass (Legal) Immigration Dooms a Conservative Republican Party.
Reading Polls About Amnesty
The Congressional Budget Office has reported that Obamacare will shrink the U.S. workforce by 2.5 million full-time jobs. That’s stunning confirmation of how Barack Obama’s favorite legislative legacy is (as Democrats have admitted) a “train wreck.”
The job loss is caused by businesses reducing their employees’ hours in order to avoid paying the employee mandate to buy insurance. Even more striking is the callous way Obama’s friends are trying to put a happy face on this bad news by claiming that Americans who are reduced to part-time jobs by Obamacare will be better off because they are liberated to exercise choice about how they spend their unemployed hours. As The New York Times wrote, it will be “more possible” to leave jobs or reduce hours for less pay because “new government subsidies will help pay premiums.”
Fifty million Americans of working-age (18 to 65) are not employed, and this number has held constant throughout the Obama presidential years. That’s an awesome 31 percent, a devastating blow to families’ livelihood, self-respect, and belief in America as the land of opportunity.
Republicans should be addressing the issues of jobs and Obamacare, but the tone-deaf Republican Establishment (the chamber-of-commerce, country-club types) keeps pushing for various versions of amnesty that will import millions of foreigners to take jobs from Americans, all the way from entry-level jobs to college graduates imported on H-1B visas. Establishment spokesmen talk a lot about devotion to the free-market system, but they ignore the Economics 101 lesson that increasing the labor supply reduces job opportunities and wages.
Businesses do market research to identify public opinion about their products, and politicians buy a lot of public opinion polls to identify voters who support their views and find out how those numbers can be increased. Today’s public opinion polls prove that Republicans are fools to support any form of amnesty or continuing to import millions of foreigners who reject conservative views and will vote for the Democrats who support big government and spending.
The Pew Research Center found that 75 percent of Hispanic immigrants and 55 percent of Asian immigrants prefer a “bigger government providing more services” and only 19 percent of Hispanics and only 36 percent of Asian immigrants prefer a smaller government. So why is anybody surprised that 71 percent of Hispanics and 73 percent of Asians voted for Obama in 2012?
The 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study found that 69 percent of immigrants support Obamacare. Pew Research found that 53 percent of Hispanics have a negative view of capitalism, which is even higher than views of self-identified supporters of Occupy Wall Street.
Polls show that Republican emphasis on patriotism and national sovereignty is likely to alienate many immigrants. A Harris poll found that 81 percent of native-born Americans believe that our schools should teach students to be proud of being American compared to only 50 percent of immigrants who have become naturalized U.S. citizens.
A survey that compared immigrants’ views on the U.S. Constitution and international law is particularly shocking. A Harris poll found that 67 percent of native-born citizens believe our Constitution is a higher legal authority than international law, but only 37 percent of naturalized citizens share that view.
Even the mainstream pro-Obama media admit the significance of these poll results. The New York Times Washington bureau chief admitted that “The two fastest-growing ethnic groups — Latinos and Asian-Americans — are decidedly liberal.” University of Alabama Political Scientist George Hawley observed, “immigrants are well to the left of the American public on a number of key issues.”
Ronald Reagan signed a generous amnesty in 1986. That didn’t do him or Republicans any good, and he later admitted it was a mistake. In the next presidential election, 1988, George H.W. Bush received only 30 percent of the Latino vote, seven percentage points less than Reagan received in 1984.
Amnesty advocates like to point to the effective assimilation of millions of immigrants from about 1880 to 1920 as a model to encourage similar largescale immigration today. However, that was followed by a national pause in immigration from the 1920s to the 1960s, which allowed newcomers to assimilate, to learn our language and customs, and to adapt to our unique system of government.
Moreover, it still took decades before those immigrants moved into the Republican column. Before they did, those immigrants and their children provided much of the political support to approve the New Deal and the Great Society.
The bottom line is that amnesty or any version thereof is suicide for the conservative movement and the Republican Party.
Sessions: ‘Right with the Truth’
“Get right with the law” is the trendy new poll-tested slogan that’s supposed to make both amnesty-resistant Americans and illegal aliens accept whatever so-called immigration “reform” that Congress considers. Alas, playing with words will not sell amnesty to Americans or non-amnesty to illegals.
House Republicans went into a “retreat” in a Maryland hideaway to consider a statement of “principles” put before them by the House leadership. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) immediately said that they are “the same recycled talking points, crafted with the help of the same consultants and special interests,” and that the proposed legislation “ensures only the amnesty and not the enforcement.”
Continuing, Senator Sessions said that the Republican so-called principles “would surge the already unprecedented level of legal lesser-skilled immigration to the U.S. that is reducing wages and increasing unemployment.” While the Republican goal should be “to transition millions of struggling Americans from welfare and joblessness to work and rising wages,” President Obama’s plan is to force “legislation that drastically surges the future flow of new immigrant workers competing against unemployed Americans.”
Senator Sessions conveniently summarized the facts about where we are and where we should be going in a 30-page statement. He refutes ten widely circulated myths that are currently used to deceive the public on this issue.
Myth: Those who broke our immigration laws will not get any special path to citizenship.
Sessions’ reply: the plan is to give a green card to ineligible aliens and that, indeed, is “a special path to citizenship.”
Myth: The plan is not amnesty because illegals will have to pay fines, back taxes, learn English, and pass background checks.
In fact, all those requirements are a farce: it’s impossible to calculate back taxes (for persons who worked “off the books”), the aliens of course will never learn English before they get amnesty, and any background checks will be as worthless as the background check of the Boston bombers.
Myth: The immigration reform debate in Congress will be full and open. Are you kidding?
From the Senate Gang of Eight’s bill to proposals that emerged from the House Republican “retreat” in Maryland, all immigration plans have been assembled in secrecy.
Myth: The majority of Americans support immigration reform.
All polls refute that statement; Pew Research Center and CBS report that 62 percent of Americans want the border secured (Period!) before any immigration “reform” is even considered.
Myth: We need a guest-worker program to fill our labor shortages and take jobs Americans won’t do.
Sessions reports that there are more than enough unemployed Americans to fill all labor shortages, and Americans in fact do work all the jobs that some claim Americans won’t do. Economist Thomas Sowell wrote that “Virtually every kind of ‘work that Americans will not do’ is in fact work that Americans have done for generations. In many cases, most of the people doing that work today are Americans.”
Myth: Those granted legalization must be able to support themselves and will not get welfare.
What a lie! That has been the law for generations but the Obama Administration pays no attention to it. For example, the Boston bomber family actually was given $100,000 in welfare benefits.
Myth: Immigration reform will help the economy.
In fact, amnesty will mean a larger number of people unemployed and on welfare.
Myth: Border security will come first and no legalization can happen unless triggers have been implemented.
Almost nobody believes that myth. Rasmussen reported that only 5 percent believe the government would ever close the border after immigration “reform” is passed.
Myth: Passing “immigration reform” and fixing the border will end illegal immigration.
Hardly anybody believes that will or can happen so long as Obama fails to close the border, fails to use E-Verify, refuses to use the biometric exit system to track visa entrants who don’t depart when their legal time expires, and prevents our immigration agents from arresting and removing those who enter illegally or overstay their visas.
Myth: Congress will force Obama to fully enforce the immigration reform bill if passed by Congress.
That’s a sick joke coming after Obama’s braggadocio that he will use his pen to scratch out any provisions he dislikes in any law.
Commissioner Peter Kirsanow of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights said, “The immigration bill is a disaster for the unemployed.” As Senator Sessions points out, all plans will “hollow out our shrinking middle class,” and “rank-and-file House Republicans are the last line of defense for working Americans.”
Congress Promotes Foreign Jobs
Congress is about to consider a massive attack on the U.S. Constitution, on the constitutional powers of Congress and the 50 states, and on U.S. sovereignty. This attack is marketed to the public as “free trade,” but it is really a devious plan to make us kowtow to international tribunals under the pretense of “harmonizing” our laws with global trade.
This plan was hatched and worked out in secret, and even members of Congress were denied access to the negotiations and documents. Barack Obama was obviously lying when he boasted that his is “the most transparent administration in history.”
The formal titles of this upcoming travesty are the two trade treaties called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). They are cozily wrapped in a Richard Nixon-era procedure known as Fast Track, which authorizes the U.S. President to make foreign deals in secret, and then demand that Congress take a quick vote approving many thousands of pages without debate or amendment.
This peculiar procedure is not only undemocratic, it is un-American. Ask your Member of Congress, why would you give Barack Obama any more dictatorial power than he already has manifested by his illegal changes to our welfare, immigration and Obamacare laws?
The trade negotiations were developed under military-style secrecy. If Congressmen want to see TPP’s 30,000-word intellectual-property chapter called Article QQ, they can do so only by entering the inner sanctum without pen, pencil or paper, according to Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY).
Understanding what the treaties do is made difficult by their lengthy and immensely complicated wording. The text is crammed with figures and details that make no sense to anyone who lacks specialized knowledge.
Most Americans believe that the poor job market, especially for young people, is our biggest current problem, and congressional action to promote faster economic growth should be Congress’s number-one priority. But all evidence and past experience conclusively prove that free trade treaties create jobs in foreign countries, not in the United States. That’s because free trade treaties promote Americans importing and buying foreign products, not foreigners buying U.S. products.
In the words of the old saying, Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice shame on me. It is shame on every Congressman who votes for another phony free trade treaty, and it’s bordering on insanity to give Barack Obama any more executive power after he has so flagrantly misused what he has.
While Obama has publicly urged corporations to do “insourcing,” his Administration sent taxpayers’ money to the Philippines to train foreign workers to speak English so they can take jobs in U.S. call centers. The U.S. Agency for International Development financed a program called the Job Enabling English Proficiency (JEEP) to train 23,000 people in the Philippines to fill U.S. jobs, and 500,000 call-center jobs have been outsourced to foreigners since 2007. Are we really short of Americans who know how to answer the telephone?
One of the most devious parts of these trade pacts is that they will force the U.S. and other participating countries to “harmonize” food safety standards. That means we and others will be required to use the lowest common denominator standards of all the dozen participating governments. This could require us to import seafood, beef and chicken products that don’t meet basic U.S. food-safety standards. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would be powerless to shut down imports of unsafe feed or food ingredients and, if it tries, multinational corporations can sue the U.S. government for loss of profits.
Vietnam government officials are excited about the recent visit of Walmart’s vice president, Ignacio Lopez, who was looking to buy low-priced goods including processed farm produce. With a minimum wage of an estimated 28 cents an hour, Vietnam is in a position to sell food and apparel rather cheaply.
The trade agreements specify that the Federal Government is required to use all possible means, such as lawsuits, preempting legislation, and cutting off federal funds, in order to force the states to comply with TPP rules made by non-Americans. Ambassador John Bolton has warned us to beware of the danger of losing our sovereignty in a web of international agreements and organizations.
Bill Clinton promised that NAFTA would produce “more exports and more jobs for the United States,” but instead we now suffer a $60 to $70 billion annual trade deficit with Mexico. Similar phony sales talks about free trade with China resulted in a 2013 trade deficit of $316 billion, and our goods deficit with South Korea has risen to over $17 billion.
Free trade continues to mean foreigners get jobs, investment and prosperity, while Americans are the losers. One can only hope that the conservative Republicans who fell for those false promises have learned their lesson and will reject future treaties that are marketed to us under the phony label of free trade.
