Obama to announce executive order on immigration

[Brittain33]

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2014/11/13/obama-plans-protect-millions-from-deportation-issue-work-permits/kY9k4UAs2WtbmZdrTabB4K/story.html

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[Brittain33]

Is it just me, or is Obama getting a lot better now that he knows he has nothing to lose?

He's fired up, ready to go.

[Brittain33]

If Obama can executive order this I guess I could ban abortion through executive order if I become President.

I'm curious how someone might do that. Obama's mechanism would be to direct the employees of the executive branch agency responsible for immigration law enforcement to change their priorities. I'm not denying it's an end run around the law, but that's the mechanism he's using. How would a hypothetical Republican President who wanted to ban abortion do so through executive agencies? An interesting thought experiment. I don't know how.

[Brittain33]

It seems to me that there is a more straightforward political move at work here. The POTUS knows that there is a Pub Congress, and it's in the Pubs interest to look like they are not the party of "no" for the next two years. Therefore he can assume that they would try to send him a series of bills to deal with immigration, a series that would get some crossover Dems who wouldn't like to be seen as obstructing the issue, yet would generally satisfy the bulk of the Pub voters. The House has been talking about that type of strategy for a year now.

The Pub bills would be anathema to the core of the Obama coalition and might even defuse some activism from immigrant groups. Therefore the POTUS issues an EO that reframes the debate. It throws a wrench into the putative Pub bill sequence and puts the Pubs back into a reactive position. The key is that it serves to preserve the political status quo on the issue.

All this, plus the quotes and video clips that his opponents will provide in response to this issue that Hillary will be putting into ads in the campaign.

[Brittain33]

I see what you're saying, but this is a very serious change in policy that shouldn't be decided by one person.

I don't disagree. In general the use of executive orders to effect major policy changes isn't a good development. It wasn't with George W. Bush and it isn't now.

[Brittain33]

The Republicans should just pass whatever immigration bill they can get through the Senate, and tell Obama to either sign it or veto it. If he vetoes it, they can say he preferred his own executive actions to Congressional legislation on the exact same topic, which wouldn't give him much of a leg to stand on. He pretty much has to sign whatever immigration bill Congress sends him now.

The thing is, McConnell and Boehner have said that if Obama goes through with this executive action, they'll refuse to negotiate with the Democrats about immigration reform.

Boehner and his caucus refused to negotiate with Obama on immigration reform before Election Day. Given the record of McConnell since early 2009 and Boehner since early 2011, there is absolutely no reason to believe Republicans had any interest or motive to negotiate with President Obama on this issue. They're happier not to deal with it except to make a show about strengthening the border (which now has some ridiculous multiple of the number of agents it used to have.)

[Brittain33]

Hastert said on C-span the other day that was never any thing known as the "Hastert Rule", just that a Speaker couldn't long exist as Speaker if he didn't retain the support of a majority of his conference. Seem to endorse having the occassionall all Dems+30 or 40 Republican vote on some things.

In the last Congress, Boehner did jettison the Hastert rule and let some bills go through with predominantly Democratic support.

How do people think he will treat immigration? It seems like republicans have not considered this an issue to give up on, unlike the budget. They'd rather let Obama make it an issue in the 2016 campaign.

[Brittain33]

Our federal government is broken. Obama's executive order is part of the breaking. But he's doing this because Congress is broken. And no, hand waving about "the Constitution" is not an excuse for Congress's dysfunction. The filibuster and gerrymandering are nowhere in the constitution and they have made governance close to impossible.

[Brittain33]

Well, I don't know. On the one hand, Congress not doing what you want does not mean Congress is broken.

I mentioned the filibuster and gerrymandering in particular. Because of the filibuster, democratic majorities could not pass laws in reasonable time in 2009-2010. Because of gerrymandering, we had a split Congress in 2013-2014 even when Democrats got over 1 million votes more than Republicans in 2012 House elections. Unified Congresses in either of those terms should have been more productive.

No, I don't consider Congress broken because split or Republican Congresses didn't pass laws I support.

[Brittain33]

I was responding to King's "strong presidency" hypothetical.

If I wanted Obama to knuckle under, I would not have supported ACA. That is proof that the legislative process can work.

...when you have 60 senators from the majority party, which the Dems enjoyed for like 5 months in 2009. Unsustainable.

[Brittain33]

I was responding to King's "strong presidency" hypothetical.

If I wanted Obama to knuckle under, I would not have supported ACA. That is proof that the legislative process can work.

...when you have 60 senators from the majority party, which the Dems enjoyed for like 5 months in 2009. Unsustainable.

Coakley blew it, but in the end MA of all states voted in number 41 Scott Brown to stop the healthcare law. That says that somewhere along the line Democrats screwed up rather badly in the process of forming and passing the law. The size of he majority bred complacency as did the promises of its forty year longevity. They thought they had time to squabble over different components and such forth.

If Obama had started with immigration he would have had it by August of 2009 most likely.

Like I said, requiring 60 votes in the Senate to pass law is a symptom of a broken government. We have natural swings toward the middle and the party in power is judged by their ability to govern. A President with huge majorities in both houses shouldn't be limited to the first 1.5 initiatives he can accomplish before natural trends reduce the majority to just very large. Remember the impact of Norm Coleman's lawsuit.

I don't expect blue avatars to sympathize with the Dem agenda in 2009 but I hope you'll consider the impact of a majority party being judged on their efficacy by voters when the minority party--in some cases, a minority party reduced to a small regional rump--can exercise a veto and then run against the majority for its inability to govern.

[Brittain33]

Because of Coleman's lawsuit, Kennedy's death, Republican solidarity, and McConnell's exploitation of the rules, there was not time in the legislative calendar to reform our broken immigration system after the economic recovery act was passed and health care reform was undertaken.

Republican votes for Democratic initiatives, even ones Republicans had voted for in the past or authored, tended to evaporate as the actual vote came closer. It was in their best interest to deny Dems the claim of bipartisanship so they could run against Democrats in the next election.