Another perspective

I have liberal friends who are upset that President Trump canceled the Dreamers plan (which gave semi-legal status to illegal immigrants who were brought here as children), that  he withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement, that he refused to recertify the Iran Nuclear Agreement, and that he cancelled the ObamaCare subsidy payments to insurance companies.

Irrespective of whether one agrees with these steps or not, one needs to look at these actions in perspective. The fact is that all Trump has done is put these issues back on a more legal footing.

Immigration laws are supposed to be established by Congress, and only by Congress. The administration is by law only supposed to enforce the laws Congress has passed. So Obama’s executive action to exempt a certain class of illegal immigrants from deportation was a constitutionally questionable action from the beginning, however much people may have approved of the result. All Trump has done is put the issue back to Congress, where it belongs in the first place.  Congress of course may bungle it – in fact given how dysfunctional the Republicans seem to be the odds are pretty good they will fail to act. But that is Congress’s fault, not the presidents’.

The Paris Climate Agreement and the Iran Nuclear Agreement are treaties, and by law treaties must be approved by Congress. The fact that President Obama bypassed Congress for both of these agreements by some legal shenanigans (because in fact Congress would likely not have approved them) doesn’t change the fact that by law they were supposed to be approved by Congress. All Trump has done is put the issues back to Congress, where they should have been in the first place. Again, Congress may or may not drop the ball, but either way by law Congress is supposed to be involved.

President Obama managed to arrange for the ObamaCare insurance company subsidies to be paid even though Congress never appropriated funds for them. Again, by law Congress has the power of the purse, and by law the government isn’t supposed to spend money that Congress hasn’t appropriated. So all Trump has done again is put the issue back to Congress, where it should have been resolved in the first place.

Once again, people may not like Trump’s actions in these cases, but in perspective all he has really done is undo some executive actions that by law Obama  should never have been allowed to put in place in the first place. Obama did it, of course, out of frustration with a Congress that wouldn't agree with him - but in fact our government is deliberately set up so that on serious issues like treaties and spending, the administration is supposed to need the support of a majority of Congress. If the president can't get enough support from Congress, than, so the framers of the Constitution reasoned (correctly, I think),  he/she shouldn't be allowed to proceed.