For the second day running, President Obama exacerbated complaints about his sometimes-unprecedented use of executive authority, as the White House announced a summer jobs program for young adults authorized under the “We Can’t Wait” initiative that Obama launched after his jobs plan failed in Congress.
“America’s youth can’t wait for Congress to act,” Obama said today in a statement. “That’s why today, we’re launching Summer Jobs+, a joint initiative that challenges business leaders and communities to join my Administration in providing hundreds of thousands of summer jobs for America’s youth.”
A combination of executive agencies and private corporations have committed “to creating nearly 180,000 employment opportunities for low-income youth in the summer of 2012,” the White House Press Office explained, “at least 100,000 of which will be placements in paid jobs and internships,” in an attempt to implement the $1.5 billion proposal regarding jobs for 16-24 year olds that failed with the American Jobs Act.
The move could raise Obama’s profile among the disappointed young voters who had supported him with enthusiasm in 2008, but it will certainly irritate congressional Republicans. House Speaker John Boehner, when Obama first announced the “We Can’t Wait” initiative, commented that he “thought that we were a nation of laws,” adding at the time that House committees would be “looking at these proposals to make sure that the president isn’t exceeding his authority.”
Obama “almost certainly” earned himself a legal battle over his executive authority yesterday, when he announced the “recess appointment” of Richard Cordray to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — an “unprecedented” assertion of presidential power, Boehner said, given that the Senate has not been adjourned long enough for a recess appointment to occur, according to constraints on the president that Obama’s own Justice Department outlined in 2010 during a U.S. Supreme Court hearing.
