Hail To The King
A Republic, if you can keep it.
Thus spake (perhaps apocryphally) Benjamin Franklin, on exiting the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Franklin was asked what sort of government the delegates had created.
In one version of the story, "[a] sturdy old woman (sometimes referred to as “an anxious lady”), wearing a shawl, approached Benjamin Franklin and asked him, “well, Doctor, what do we have, a republic or a monarchy?" The Founding Fathers, the people who designed our nation's governance, had just led a revolution against the mightiest nation on the planet at the time - a nation that happened to be a monarchy. Distrustful of concentrated power, they set up a system of limited government, separate and enumerated powers, and a tripartite power structure that was further distributed by splitting the Legislature into two houses. They also left substantial governing independence to each of the States.
It was both radical and brilliant, and while it was by no means perfect, it was better, from the perspective of individual liberty and human dignity, the best ever invented.
Unfortunately, words on a page are only as good as the people who've been elected to implement them. The beauty of a system of distributed power with "checks and balances" is that the corruptive effect of concentrated power is diminished, and the nation has protections against one person's excesses. This, also unfortunately, only delays power's corruptive effect, rather than preventing it.
Joe Biden's decision to cancel hundreds of billions of dollars in student loan debt - a gift to the Democrats' new core constituency - may well be a precedent of seismic proportions re Franklin's "if you can keep it" caution. Biden's legal team has contorted a pretzel-logic justification for this unilateral act - one that bypasses Congress's power of the purse - in some of Congress's abdications of responsibility to the executive branch. Namely, a 2003 DoE authorization and some of the pandemic emergency power authorizations.
When I heard the first rumblings of this blatant giveaway to those who went to expensive colleges, I noted that Team Blue had become "The Democratic Socialist Rich People's Party." Sure enough, that's who's being rewarded.
Not those who saved and worked to pay for college out of pocket. Not those who went into the trades, or the military, or straight to work after high school, or who built businesses themselves rather than following the ever-touted "college or bust" path. The income cutoffs for this giveaway ($125K per individual, $250K per couple) belie the notion that this is about rescuing those who are being crushed by college debt. $10-$20K in relief to a six figure earner is nothing but a bribe. Along with the farcically named Inflation Reduction Act, it's part of a last-gasp effort to retain the blue majority in the House.
When Biden finally dropped this pile of excrescence on a nation already in unfathomable debt and dealing in inflation not seen in four decades, I immediately thought, "no, without Congressional authorization this cannot stand." Indeed, both Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer had opined that only Congress had the power to do this. Then it occurred to me that there might be no one in a position to stop him. That no one had "standing" to sue, and get this matter before a court and a judge who could ixnay the giveaway.
Sure enough, Dominic Pino at National Review had the same thought. There may indeed be no one who can bring suit against this executive action.
Congress could possibly reclaim its authority by writing some legislation that overrules Biden's action and removes the asserted basis for it. The Republicans would be on board, but it'd take a two-thirds majority in both houses to do this, and despite the earlier claims by Pelosi and Schumer, I have no expectation that they'll undercut their President a couple months before an election.
The precedent set by this "I've got so much power you can't stop me" act will reverberate for decades. Past Presidents, before they became Presidents, complained about executive over-reach. Of course, when it came their turn, they did what they wanted, to the extent they could get away with it. This is next-level executive abuse, and if someone can't figure out how to get the courts to review it, we are one large step closer to the banana-republic abyss.
It should not matter so much who the President is. Lawmaking and control over spending are properly the province of the Legislature, not the White House and its ever-growing bureaucracy. That so much power has invested in the Executive would cause the Founders to roll over in their graves.
All we can hope for at this juncture is someone clever enough to figure out how to "show standing" enough to get this to judicial review. And, if the courts (and, I would expect, the Court) decide that, yes indeed, Congress did give the President the power to do this, Congress takes that power away. Otherwise, we might as well accept we are now living in a monarchy, not a Republic.
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Yours in liberty,
Peter.
I believe I made the point on National Review Online (or was it NRPlus on Facebook?) that if no one has standing to sue over a blatant executive abuse of power, we are essentially in a banana republic style dictatorship.
Assuming Biden's executive action stands legally, who will pay - ultimately? Well, all of us, of course - in inflated prices and higher taxes and higher interest rates. Yesterday Fed Chairman Powell announced there will be much pain coming in higher interest rates to combat inflation. Who pays that? Not current homeowners, of course, but recent college grads looking for their first place to live. This will ratchet up the price of rents AND mortgages. Also, college graduates tend to move quickly into the "income tax paying" range of the earner scale - out of the "not paying" brackets of the lower three earning quintiles. And for those earners who thought they were safe from Biden's scheming - their 401Ks will shed a big chunk of wealth - the Dow lost a thousand points yesterday, which is just the start of what is to come. Higher prices, higher taxes and higher interest rates - that's the economy these "college grads" are inheriting, in exchange for a short-term, vote-buying scheme. They better hope it doesn't pass legal challenge.