Executive Orders and Your Safety

There’s an email circulating with false information about number of executive orders President Obama is credited with writing. The problem isn’t how many, it’s what they are about. Most presidents have used them lawfully; this president uses them to sidestep or destroy existing laws and rights.

According to Snopes, quoting the American Presidency Project (University of Southern California), the correct information about claims made in the email and presidential executive orders is given below. The figures include only Obama’s first term, but the second term has followed suit. Obama is not a major violator by the number of executive orders.

Name	Number claimed:	Actual number:
Theodore Roosevelt	3	1,081
Franklin Roosevelt	11	3,522
Harry Truman	5	907
Dwight Eisenhower	2	484
John Kennedy	4	214
Lyndon Johnson	4	325
Richard Nixon	1	346
Gerald Ford	3	169
Jimmy Carter	3	320
Ronald Reagan	5	381
George H.W. Bush	3	166
Bill Clinton	15	364
George W. Bush	62	291
Barack Obama	923	147

The problem with President Obama is that he is using executive orders to unconstitutionally create law—to avoid public debate and opposition as public policy is set. Yet debate is what public policy is about, and opposition defines the boundaries of the debate. We must have debate and opposition.

No president should make laws; that’s for Congress, alone, but they do, nonetheless. The sitting Congress should have squelched this when it happened the first time a century ago. Now we have a deep layer of unlawful executive orders and Congress has accepted this encroachment on its power. An executive order, according to USA.gov, the federal government’s official website, has basically the same force as a federal law. Congress can overrule it with a new law, but it would be subject to a presidential veto and require a 2/3 majority vote of both houses of Congress to override the president’s veto. Or, the Supreme Court can overturn it as unconstitutional.

President Obama said in his last two State of the Union addresses that he would use executive orders to meet policy goals if Congress didn’t act: “America does not stand still, and neither will I. So wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation to expand opportunity for more American families, that’s what I’m going to do”. Translate that: “I am God, and I am a dictator.” This is blackmail and it kills our democratic republic. President Obama is using executive orders on such important matters as immigration and second amendment protection—23 orders on this topic, alone.

Other presidents have done dramatic things, good and bad, with executive orders. President Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus during the Civil War and emancipated the slaves. FDR put the Japanese in internment camps during World War II and created the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a massive federal welfare project with a bad precedent. Truman tried to federalize steel mills during a strike, but the Supreme Court struck the action down in 1952. The court said: “The President’s power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a lawmaker.” That’s very instructive. Does the court still think that?

There are executive orders in place that can strip us of most of our rights as Americans. Many were put in place for protection in emergencies but with their use the government can relocate us, shut down our communication pathways and take our transportation and property.

The real issue with executive orders, now that we have them, is this: What is the character of the man in office who could execute them? Is he a man of integrity and honor who would never callously use these orders against his own people?

On March 16, 2012, Obama issued the National Defense Resources Preparedness EO, which allows the federal government to confiscate your property without due process under the direction of the Department of Homeland Security.

That should keep you up at night.

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