As he enters the final phase of his term in office, President Obama now has a mostly negative role in the governing process. His suggestions for transformative policy changes are nearly irrelevant now that his party has squandered the firm control of Congress it enjoyed in 2009. He cannot count on getting the votes to pass anything new.
Obama’s contribution from this point forward will be to use vetoes and threats to obstruct whatever the recently elected Republican Congress passes. So far in this session of Congress, the media have focused on Republicans’ struggles to fulfill their base’s expectations while avoiding a government shutdown. But at some point, they will have to acknowledge Obama’s role as President No. Ideally, it will occur as Obama is given as many opportunities as possible to use his veto pen.
Ever since Democrats lost the House of Representatives and their filibuster-proof Senate majority in 2010, Obama has complained incessantly about GOP obstructionism against both bills and nominees. But who is obstructing now?
This week, Obama vetoed a bill that would have finally required State Department approval of construction of the long-delayed Keystone XL Pipeline. The privately funded pipeline would immediately create thousands of construction jobs — the reason the Laborers’ International Union supported it. In the longer term, it would help oil producers move their product to market more safely than by rail, and more cheaply, which is critical given the recent plunge in oil prices.
Keystone may seem like a small issue — and in a sense it is, because it is just one pipeline among dozens that cross the country. But Keystone is also a litmus test of common sense when it comes to economic questions. Obama’s dilatory action against permitting the project demonstrates that he would sooner bow down to the environmental radicals who oppose it — and who spent upwards of $60 million supporting Democratic candidates in the 2014 election — than put more Americans to work at zero cost to the taxpayer.
Obama is also threatening to veto the No Child Left Behind reauthorization currently making its way through Congress, known as the Student Success Act. The bill would limit the power of the education secretary by barring him from threatening, coercing or bribing states in an effort to dictate their education policies. The current secretary, Arne Duncan, has done this repeatedly in his effort to force states to conform to the Common Core standards. Whatever the merit of those or any other standards, it simply isn’t the job of the federal government to micromanage education policy, which has always been a state issue.
Obama is not happy about this potential limitation on his power to bludgeon the states, and has issued a veto threat.
Obama actually issued five veto threats in his State of the Union address — against anything undoing his immigration decree, against Keystone, against an Iran sanctions bill, against repeal of Obamacare and against reform of the Dodd-Frank bill governing Wall Street.
Republicans would do well to make Obama honor these promises with actual vetoes. After four years of hearing Obama complain about obstructionism — and even use it as an excuse to bypass the constitutional process for legislation — they owe him as much.
