According to Joel Pollak, next week’s health reform summit is much worse than a mere trap for Republicans:
It’s also a violation of the spirit of our Constitution’s separation of powers.
The President, while permitted to propose and veto laws, is not authorized to participate directly in the legislative process. But that is precisely what Obama will be doing next week:
President Obama’s summit will create a surrogate legislative process, without the procedural safeguards provided by the Constitution and the rules of each house.
Pollak believes that this extra-constitutional maneuver is consistent with Obama’s general contempt for the Constitution, as evidenced in his State of the Union address:
President Obama attacked the independence of the other two branches of government. He announced he would circumvent the Senate after it rejected his budget panel, and he rebuked the Supreme Court. The summit must be understood in the context of that assault on the separation of powers. Much more than the health care bill is at stake.
Hmm … This is an interesting point that I haven’t seen raised elsewhere. And, unfortunately, the constitutionality of Obamacare (or the process by which it is imposed on us) has thus far been of little concern to the President or his congressional accomplices.
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