Obama Overreaching: A Constitutional Crisis?

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama has often threatened that if Congress won't pass laws he wants or feels are needed, he'll go ahead and act on his own. 

He's now made good on that threat so many times, protests are rising that he's throwing America's constitutional system off-balance.

House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., told CBN News he's worried the president is changing laws by himself in ways the Constitution says only Congress is allowed to do.

"He is overreaching in a multitude of ways," the congressman said, and then pointed to the massive law legislating Obamacare. "There are dozens of examples. Obamacare itself. He has now in 40 different matters changed Obamacare."

'Serial Lawlessness'

"It's serial lawlessness," added Andrew McCarthy, author of Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama's Impeachment. 

He told CBN News his book is packed with dozens of examples of Obama doing this.

"Where he's either waived the law, unilaterally modified the law, or refused to enforce the law," McCarthy stated. "Immigration is another area where we have just a continuous series of situations where the president has just made up the law as he goes along."

These gentlemen joined a recent panel hosted by the watchdog group Judicial Watch to discuss this overreaching by the president.

Tom Fitton, moderator and Judicial Watch president, said Obama's acting more like a monarch than an elected leader with limits.

"In the words of Thomas Jefferson, 'To appoint a monarchist to conduct the affairs of a republic is like appointing an atheist to the priesthood,'" Fitton said during the panel discussion.

"This is a very serious constitutional issue," Goodlatte said of Obama's overreaching, adding that Article 1, Section 1 of the Constitution states only legislators can make laws.

"The very first sentence gives that power to the Congress, not the president," Goodlatte stated. "In Article 2, the president is given the power to faithfully execute the laws, a power and a responsibility that he is not fulfilling."

A Dangerous Precedent

The problem beyond Obama's presidency is that almost anything an American president does sets a precedent. And those precedents live long after the man has left the Oval Office.

"The precedents that President Obama is setting now for acting in his executive capacity beyond the bounds of the law are precedents that will be available to every future president, whether it's a Democrat or a Republican," McCarthy warned.

Many Democrats have applauded the president acting without congressional authority. McCarthy warned they should beware.

"The people who are happy I suppose with President Obama's agenda today may not be happy if the next lawless president is from the other side of the aisle, and they find themselves as we seem to find ourselves today powerless to rein him in," McCarthy said.

Leading law professor Jonathan Turley, a liberal who voted for Obama, wrote in the Los Angeles Times that he's quite concerned where Obama is taking the country.  

"The United States is at a constitutional tipping point: the rise of an uber presidency unchecked by the other two branches," he wrote in the March 9, 2014 edition.

"The system of separation of powers was not created to protect the authority of each branch for its own sake," he explained. "Rather, it is the primary protection of individual rights because it prevents the concentration of power in any one branch."

"In this sense, Obama is not simply posing a danger to the constitutional system; he has become the very danger that separation of powers was designed to avoid," he wrote.

Fitton agreed.

"President Obama has shown neither reticence nor reluctance in undermining the systems of checks and balances that has served this country so well for so long," Fitton commented during the Judicial Watch panel discussion

"And that's why we think the courts need to step in," said Goodlatte, who fully supports House Republicans suing the president.

A Political Stunt?

Critics have dismissed that lawsuit as politics as usual. Goodlatte has an answered for those critics.

"It's not a political question as they often like to characterize it. It's a constitutional question," he said.

"He (Obama) is usurping the powers of the people to have the laws made by the people they elected to represent them in the Congress," the Judiciary chairman said. "And if he continues to do that, then the Congress itself goes into a death spiral where it's no longer able to legislate."

The longtime legislator described how Obama has helped tie Congress in knots.

"Because the people who like what he's doing in the Congress won't negotiate with the people who don't like what he's doing," Goodlatte explained. "And those people don't trust him to carry out future laws since they already don't trust him to carry out existing laws."

But McCarthy suggested the House's lawsuit is likely to be ineffectual since courts need Obama's Executive Branch to actually enforce court decisions.

"A court has nothing in the way of armament but judgment, no power to execute its own order," the National Review writer explained. "A court needs the Executive Branch in order to execute its orders."

"So I think people are dreaming if they think that President Obama is going to execute a court's orders against President Obama," he continued. "And actually what we've seen over time is that he has no more regard for court decisions that go against him than he does for statutes that prove inconvenient."

McCarthy went on to say Obama's overreaching is now so fast and frequent that opponents can't actually fight him on every front.

"If you're doing it day after day after day like President Obama is on every issue, you essentially overload the system," McCarthy explained.