Lawless President?

                Does Barack Obama believe he is above the law?  Does he believe that he has the power to do anything he desires?  Does he think he can rewrite laws without going through Congress?  Is he a lawless president?

                Mr. Obama has made wide use of his executive orders in past months to accomplish his agenda; he seems to take executive action whenever Congress tells him “no.”  In recent weeks he made his famous statement about having a pen and a telephone, implying that he would do whatever is necessary to achieve his agenda.  He said that he wanted to make 2014 “a year of action” and threatened to use more executive orders in the future.

                Representative Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) seems to think so.  In a recent appearance on ABC’s “This Week” Congressman Ryan said, “We have an increasingly lawless presidency where he is actually doing the job of Congress, writing new policies and new laws without going through Congress….  Presidents don’t write laws, Congress does.  And when he does things like he did in healthcare, delaying mandates that the law said was supposed to occur, when they were supposed to occur, that’s not his job.  The job of Congress is to change laws if he doesn’t like them, not the presidency.”  He added, “Executive orders are one thing, but executive orders that actually change the statute, that’s totally different.”

                Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) recently asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to disclose the Justice Department’s legal counsel’s opinions and analyses of the executive orders of Mr. Obama.  In his State of the Union address earlier this week, the President made plain his intention to implement his agenda through aggressive use of these orders, whether or not the Congress and the American people agree.  I am gravely concerned that the system of checks and balances enshrined in the Constitution is threatened by the President’s determination to take unilateral action if he cannot persuade Congress and the American people of the merits of his ideas.”

                 SenatorTed Cruz (R-Texas) explained that the Obama administration has “a pattern of lawlessness” that should concern both Republicans and Democrats.  “Suppose the next president says, `I’m instructing the Treasury Department [to] no longer collect taxes at a higher rate than 25%....  That happens to be policy I agree with.  I would love to see moving towards tax reform and lowering the top rates.  And yet, that would be an extraordinarily bad outcome from the perspective of the Constitution and the protection of the liberty of the people.” 

                Senator Cruz gave this warning:  “For all of those on the left who are willing to excuse the president’s lawlessness and disregarding federal law, there will come another president… of the other party.”

                After referencing “the string of unilateral changes made to Obamacare alone,” Senator Cruz added:  “If a president can pick and choose which laws to follow, he’s no longer a president.”

                If members of Congress believe that the President of the United States is breaking the law, why are they not calling for formal procedures against him?  Why are they not pressing impeachment if they truly believe he is breaking the law?