OPINION:
Not long ago, American presidents waged bitter fights with their political opponents in Congress, and in the end arrived at a civil compromise. President Obama consistently shows that he lacks the skill set, work ethic, political courage or humility to follow the path of his predecessors.
Few personified the statesmanlike relationship between branches of American government better than House Speaker Tip O’Neill and President Ronald Reagan. Each held strong and usually opposing views based on philosophy and principle. When necessary, they fought each other mercilessly. At the end of the day, though, both put aside their differences and worked together for the good of the nation.
How times have changed.
Today America’s foreign policy focus is combating terrorism; the big battle then was about how to resist and reverse Soviet expansion. With the Soviets encroaching toward America’s southern border, the fight was drawn over Reagan’s support for the Nicaraguan peasant guerrilla army seeking to oust the Kremlin-backed Sandinista regime.
Like today, the president faced both houses of Congress controlled by his political opposition. Where the House and Senate couldn’t defeat Reagan’s Nicaragua policy outright, they attached amendments to water it down. Under Tip O’Neill’s leadership, Congress attached the Boland Amendment to the entire Defense Appropriations Act for 1983. That amendment prevented appropriated funds from being used to arm the Nicaraguan freedom-fighters, known as the Contras, seeking to overthrow the Sandinistas.
There was no filibustering in the U.S. Senate over these issues. Reagan didn’t shut down the Pentagon just because he didn’t like part of the legislation. He signed the defense appropriations bill into law, and continued his policies within the confines set by Congress.
In the tradition of the Democrats’ Boland Amendment and thousands of other similar appropriations amendments, congressional Republicans recently placed a narrow restriction in the appropriations bill to keep the Department of Homeland Security running through the end of this fiscal year. That restriction would not allow the president to spend any taxpayer dollars to implement his executive order granting amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants.
As a freshman member of Congress, I am stunned by a president who wants a pet project so badly that he would rather shut down America’s internal defenses than compromise. But Barack Obama is no Ronald Reagan.
This executive order is reckless brinkmanship for crass political gain. It’s part of Mr. Obama’s agenda to “fundamentally transform America.” It isn’t to keep the nation secure. The president calculates that the media and public will blame the Republicans in Congress for a Homeland Security shutdown. He believes Congress will ultimately relent.
The administration and media conveniently ignore a critical point: Congress can’t fund Mr. Obama’s executive order because the order itself is illegal.
Half the states in the union are backing a lawsuit to stop the president by questioning the legality of the entire amnesty decree. A federal district court in Texas enjoined the implementation of the president’s order. The president argued on 22 occasions that he couldn’t issue the executive order that he ultimately approved.
Under the law, each person seeking to immigrate here must appear before a U.S. consular official at a facility outside the United States. The individual must provide a formal application with photographs and other legal identification, submit to an interview, and go through screening and evaluation. If cleared, the individual receives a U.S. visa.
The president’s action also violates existing law for those individuals who arrived here legally but have been undocumented immigrants for more than a year.
With certain humanitarian exceptions, the Immigration and Naturalization Act states flatly that “any alien” who “has been unlawfully present in the United States for one year or more, and who again seeks admission within 10 years of the date of such alien’s departure or removal from the United States is inadmissible.”
Three decades ago, Reagan complied with the Boland Amendment by ensuring that federal funds were not used to support the Contras’ efforts to overthrow the Sandinistas but to support free and fair elections instead.
However, some of Reagan’s aides went around the Boland Amendment by raising private money to fund the Contras. They believed the circumvention was legal. The controversy around their actions resulted in the Iran-Contra congressional investigation that scarred the Reagan presidency.
Reagan lived to regret the end run around the law. In contrast, Mr. Obama publicly flaunts his executive “authority,” vowing to shut down the nation’s internal defenses in order to get his way.
Having been a staff attorney supporting the House Select Committee investigation into the covert arms transfers intended to help the Contras, I witnessed firsthand a failure of government. As a new member of Congress I know that the American people expect our leaders to abide by their constitutional roles and create lawful answers to the serious problems facing our country.
For the good of the country, Mr. Obama should use the last two years of his term to heal the bitterness his imperial presidency is imposing on the nation. He could start by emulating the relationship that President Reagan had with Speaker O’Neill, while he still has time.
• Ken Buck, a Republican, is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Colorado.
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