Will the Courts finally begin enforcing the Constitution against a President who has sought to ignore it?
The ruling by United States District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer in the case United States House of Representatives v. Sylvia Mathews Burwell stated that the Obama Administration unconstitutionally sought to spend money to subsidize health insurers under the Affordable Care Act. The amount in question—estimated to be upwards of $175 billion throughout the next ten years, is enormous, but the ruling (The effects of which have been delayed pending an appeal) has consequences beyond the immediate legal issue at hand.
From the time that the Democrat Party first lost control of the House of Representatives during Obama’s tenure, the President has run roughshod over the mandatary separation of powers in America’s fundamental law. He was not shy about his contempt for the Constitution, declaring that he “could not wait for Congress to act” and that he had “a pen and a phone” and knew how to use them.
While Congress was not as aggressive as it could, or indeed should, have been concerning past abuses of power by the current Administration, the act of spending money without the approval of Congress was a step too far. Indeed, if the White House gained this authority, combined with the President’s overreaching Executive Orders and the use of the federal bureaucracy to enact regulations that should realistically have been legislative items, the entire reason for the existence of the legislative branch would have been dismantled. The United States government would resemble one man rule—essentially, an elected dictatorship.
The Constitution is clear on the issue, plainly stating in Article 1, Section 9 that “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law,” and only the legislative branch has the authority to initiate such a law. Congress explicitly did not do so in this case, yet Obama has spent and is prepared to spend further funds anyway.
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The Administration, perhaps realizing that it had usurped Congressional authority, sought to prevent the case from proceeding forward by contending that the legislative branch lacked standing to sue. However, in a ruling handed down on September 9, 2015, the Court declared that Congress did indeed have the right to enforce its Constitutional privileges in a legal action.
In its decision the Court noted that “Article I of the United States Constitution established the Congress, which comprises a House of Representatives and a Senate. U.S. Const. art. I, § 1. Only these two bodies, acting together, can pass laws—including the laws necessary to spend public money. In this respect, Article I is very clear: ‘No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law . . . .’ U.S. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 7. Through this lawsuit, the House of Representatives complains that Sylvia Burwell, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Jacob Lew, the Secretary of the Treasury, and their respective departments (collectively the Secretaries) have spent billions of unappropriated dollars to support the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The House further alleges that Secretary Lew and Treasury have, under the guise of implementing regulations, effectively amended the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate by delaying its effect and narrowing its scope… The House sues, as an institutional plaintiff, to preserve its power of the purse and to maintain constitutional equilibrium between the Executive and the Legislature. If its non-appropriation claims have merit, which the Secretaries deny, the House has been injured in a concrete and particular way that is traceable to the Secretaries and remediable in court. The Court concludes that the House has standing to pursue those constitutional claims.”
It is truly chilling to realize how far from the Constitution this Administration has strayed, and how little opposition it has encountered as it violated one clause after another. It has repeatedly enacted vast and broad changes to the U.S. economy that could only legally be enacted by legislation, yet were accomplished through executive orders and bureaucratic regulation. It has entered into substantial treaties with foreign governments, but has prevented the Senate from voting on them as constitutionally mandated by simply labelling them as “agreements.” It has endangered a key portion of free speech rights by simply surrendering control of the internet to an international body comprised of many members that believe in censorship.
In two key legacy areas of the Obama Administration, the nuclear deal with Iran and the Affordable Care Act, members of the White House have actually bragged that they lied to Congress and the American people in order to achieve goals. A quiescent and biased media has failed to cover dissent over these outrages, and federal agencies under the control of the President have actively sought to unlawfully suppress dissent, the IRS being a prime example.