So, it's legislative fiat from the executive branch, and we're just supposed to be hunky-dory with this?USAToday: By issuing his directives as "memoranda" rather than executive orders, Obama has downplayed the extent of his executive actions.
President Obama has issued a form of executive action known as the presidential memorandum more often than any other president in history — using it to take unilateral action even as he has signed fewer executive orders.
When these two forms of directives are taken together, Obama is on track to take more high-level executive actions than any president since Harry Truman battled the "Do Nothing Congress" almost seven decades ago, according to a USA TODAY review of presidential documents.
Obama has issued executive orders to give federal employees the day after Christmas off, to impose economic sanctions and to determine how national secrets are classified. He's used presidential memoranda to make policy on gun control, immigration and labor regulations. Tuesday, he used a memorandum to declare Bristol Bay, Alaska, off-limits to oil and gas exploration.
Like executive orders, presidential memoranda don't require action by Congress. They have the same force of law as executive orders and often have consequences just as far-reaching. And some of the most significant actions of the Obama presidency have come not by executive order but by presidential memoranda.
ADDENDUM: Guy Benson further exposes the White House's dumb 'executive action' numbers game...
Townhall: Whenever the White House is pressed on President Obama's promiscuous and impactful use of executive action to achieve his policy objectives, they fall back on a specious talking point: Contrary to Republican claims, they say, Obama has issued significantly fewer executive orders than his predecessors from both parties over the last century. The goal is to paint critics as hypocritical, foolish, and blinded by irrational opposition. Many journalists seem to have swallowed Team Obama's story whole. But not USA Today reporter Gregory Korte, or Fox News' Ed Henry, who challenged White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest on the president's math, exposing the cynical and contradictory "rules" by which the administration has been playing in order to sustain their misleading claim:
"Thank you, Ed. I've had enough of your questions on this subject." That is some weak sauce spin from Earnest, parsing terms and harping on semantics to obscure the larger truth. But as I said on Fox earlier, the numerical quantity and technical categories of executive action are far less relevant than the legality, propriety and consequences of the action being taken:
Even if a president almost never issued any executive orders or memoranda, if he then turned around and exceeded his authority with one giant violation of the separation of powers, those raw numbers don't matter. They're a distraction. And while this president's comprehensive hypocrisy on issues from campaign finance, to transparency, to executive power is well established at this point, I couldn't help but quote him as a presidential candidate in the 2008 cycle:
Notice that he wasn't troubled by President Bush's excessive issuance of executive memos vs. executive orders, or whatever. He was (or at least claimed to be) worried about what he saw as Bush's improper arrogation of power, vis-a-vis Congress. That Barack Obama is long gone. Because Barack Obama's guiding principle is employing whatever argument or behavior Barack Obama needs in the moment. His own standards and previous statements don't matter when the 'greater good' is at stake.
