For all their talk about protecting democracy, Democrats sure are proving quick to abandon it by sidelining Congress and pushing President Joe Biden to enact a far-left agenda unilaterally through executive action.
Last week, the Congressional Progressive Caucus released “Recommendations for Executive Action,” a six-page document outlining policies that left-wing Democrats failed to persuade even a Democratic-controlled Congress to pass. They now want Biden to use presidential power alone to implement what has been rejected by the representatives of the wider public. Can there be a more crystalline example of elitism over equality?
The scope of the changes Democrats are pushing for is staggering. The document calls on Biden to declare a national climate emergency using the same authority President Donald Trump used to declare a national emergency on the southern border to build a border wall. Instead of building a wall, the Progressive Caucus wants Biden to use the 1976 National Emergencies Act to cripple domestic energy production. They demand an all-out ban on fossil fuel production on federal land, an end to exports of domestic oil, and higher taxes on oil companies.
They also want mass amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants. Specifically, the document demands that Biden grant temporary protected status to illegal migrants from Cameroon, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Guinea, Haiti, Honduras, Hong Kong, Lebanon, Mauritania, Mexico, Nepal, Nicaragua, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Yemen.
The secretary of homeland security has the power to grant TPS to any country he determines is in the throes of armed conflict, environmental disaster, or extraordinary and temporary conditions. Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas recently granted Ukrainians TPS. With TPS status, migrants may get work permits, Social Security numbers, and driver’s licenses.
The word “temporary” is misleading. In reality, the program is permanent for those migrants in the U.S. when TPS was granted. TPS migrants almost never lose it and most often become permanent residents or citizens. About 70% of illegal immigrants come from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, or Honduras. Granting TPS to illegal immigrants from these countries would be the largest amnesty in history.
Finally, the Progressive Caucus also demands that America’s wealthiest people get more than a trillion dollars more by canceling all student debt. The wealthy pay almost two-fifths of all monthly student loan payments; the poorest fifth pay just 2%. The greatest burden of this regressive largesse will fall on those least able to afford it.
“This isn’t a messaging exercise,” Progressive Caucus Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal told reporters about the Recommendation for Executive Action last week. “These are steps that we believe the president has the authority and the ability to take now and should do so.”
Whether Biden has the authority to do everything listed is debatable. Anything he does by executive action can also be undone by a future president. But the core point is not how awful the “progressive” policies are, it is that such a radical agenda should not be implemented unilaterally and in defiance of our highest elected legislature. We have a House and a Senate for a reason. Democrats control both chambers. If they can’t pass these policy changes through a Congress they control, they definitely should not force them on the public by executive diktat.
