Opinion: Why Obama's a Hypocrite on Executive Power

The Left was right when it railed against President George W. Bush's work to expand executive branch power, and now the Right is correct to be railing against Obama for ignoring constitutional limits as well.

On Wednesday, President Obama introduced Richard Cordray as the new head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and scolded congressional Republicans for failing to confirm the former Attorney General sooner.

The Republicans should be ashamed of their stonewalling of nominees, but this does not give the president the authority to ignore constitutional limts on executive branch powers.

His actions on appointments aren't the only example of this. Obama also grossly overstepped presidential powers in the manner in which he took us to war in Libya. As I said then, I supported our engagement there, but the President must get congressional approval for such engagements.

On a more recent note, the left went after George W. Bush for using so called signing statements on bills he signed into law, and now they're giving Obama a pass for doing the very same thing. Just a few days ago, the President tacked a 13 paragraph signing statement to the National Defense Authorization Act, listing a bunch of things passed in that law that he just, you know, isn't going to follow.

Not only is this angering members of Congress, as well as those who pay attention to the worrisome growth of Presidential power, but it also flies directly in the face of campaign promises Obama made in 2007 and 2008.

Obama is breaking yet another promise here, and while he's signed about 1/4th as many as Bush had at this point in his presidency, saying you're better than George W. Bush is not something to be proud of. Like so many other examples, when Democrats are in power, things like this are acceptable and Republicans rail against them, with the mirror opposite being the case when a Republican is in the White House.

Even the American Bar Association is concerned with the President's actions. The following quote from a post at The Daily Beast speaks to why signing statements are considered unconstitutional by many:

“The Constitution gives the president the power of veto, and if the president is not going to abide by a part of any given legislation provided by Congress, then he needs to veto that legislation and let the Congress decide whether to override that veto,” said Bill Robinson III, the president of the American Bar Association.

Speaking of the constitution, Article II of the Constitution states that the President can only fill vacancies during recesses. While the GOP should be ashamed of it, they have been making sure the President didn't do this by holding regular meetings so as to not go out of session. The Obama administration's response was to redefine what they consider as recess, so they could make their appointments. So now Obama and company think they should be able to so ignore those seperation of powers that they get to decide when the Senate really is in or out of session.

The President should not have the power to decide when another branch of what is supposed to be a seperated government is in session, or any other such control over them, any more than Congress should be able to tell the President whether or not he can have a conversation with a foreign leader to talk about some issue of import (or just a friendly chat for that matter).

These issues are particularly reprehensible coming from a candidate who campaigned on being a constitutional scholar who would respect the separation of powers. Between signing statements, skirting his constitutional limits on appointments and ignoring the War Powers Act, he's shown that he is just another politician who believes in railing against opponents when they have control and skirt constitutional limits and hypocritically ignoring them when they take power for themselves.