st<\/sup> century U.S. president is far more powerful and central to the workings of government than originally envisioned by the framers. These \u201cimplied\u201d powers have been assumed, seized and expanded by presidents over the centuries from Washington to Obama. The courts and Congress have, from time to time, placed limits on executive authority. But ambitious and aggressive presidents are constantly testing these limits to varying degrees of success. The conflict between presidential and legislative authority will continue as long as the \u201cseparation of powers\u201d remains the fundamental principle of the U.S. Constitution.<\/p>\nIn regard to the second question, the best answer is: Nobody knows what President Obama on his own authority can do if nothing happens to avert the so-called \u201cfiscal cliff.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Personally, I\u2019m sure that President Obama has a team of constitutional lawyers right now hard at work trying to determine what he can and cannot do through executive authority to ameliorate the effects of a failure to get a deal through Congress. I\u2019m sure they will stretch the limits as far as they can. We will learn more about these arcane maneuvers after the first of the year.<\/p>\n
Part of the challenge is the issues are complicated and involve a series of legislative matters that coincidentally converge at the end of the year. One issue is the \u201csunset\u201d provisions of the massive tax cuts enacted under President Bush in 2000 that were set to expire in 2010. They were renewed twice under Obama and are now ready to expire again Dec. 31 2012 unless Congress passes legislation to extend or modify them. Obama campaigned on raising taxes on everyone over $250,000 while preserving them for those below.<\/p>\n
Another issue concerns something called \u201csequestration.\u201d In 2011, Congress with Obama\u2019s support passed a bill to raise the nation\u2019s debt ceiling that included an incentive for both Republicans and Democrats to come to a bi-partisan agreement on a plan to reduce the nation\u2019s long-term debt. The incentive was this:\u00a0If Congress failed to produce a deficit reduction bill with at least $1.2 trillion in cuts, across-the-board cuts (“sequestration\u201d) of billions of dollars in government would automatically go into effect on January 2, 2013. Congress failed to produce a deficit reduction bill and now those cuts will go into effect unless legislation is passed to repeal them.<\/p>\n
There are other issues, but tax cuts and sequestration are the two major ones. Of course, all revenue bills must originate in the House which is why President Obama and Speaker Boehner have been the main players in getting a deal that will pass Congress.<\/p>\n
Please note that the \u201ccliff\u201d is more like a slide than a precipice. The effects of a failure to act by Dec. 31 might take up to 60 days to be fully felt, so there will be time for the new Congress to take action. But business and people are uncertain about what taxes they will pay, government agencies don\u2019t know their funding and the economy could suffer. And the so-called \u201ctax season\u201d begins in late January when Americans can start filing tax returns and hopefully get refund checks. The biggest impact is psychological and the perception that the U.S. government is dysfunctional. The crazies in Congress have not taken over, yet, but they are running amok.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Meanwhile the President and Congressional members have gone home for Christmas with no agreement to avoid the fiscal cliff. Barack Obama is hoping that they will return to Washington DC after Christmas more willing to do a deal. But the clock is ticking and market confidence is ever more fragile.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve had an interesting e-mail from a guy who asks me: “I would like to learn about the extent of Presidential powers, as granted by the Constitution, to deal with situations in which the cooperation of Capitol Hill may be suboptimal.\u00a0 For example, can the President issue and enact executive orders aimed at avoiding the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-us-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10286"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10303,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10286\/revisions\/10303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}