There is a Constitution!' John Boehner blasts Obama for using executive order to hike minimum wage for federal contract workers by 39 PER CENT
- GOP leaders bristle at the White House's strategy to sidestep Congress as Obama unilaterally hikes the minimum wage for federal contractors
- 'I think it’s a constitutional violation,' said Iowa Rep. Steve King
- 'There's a Constitution that we all take an oath to, including him,' said House Speaker John Boehner of the president
- Companies doing business with the federal government now must pay contract workers at least $10.10 per hour, up from $7.25
- The president will use his bully pulpit Tuesday night to demand lawmakers follow his lead and hike wages nationwide, including in the private sector
- On many issues, says a GOP strategist, Obama 'can't just wave his magic wand and make a bill appear on his desk. That's got to drive him nuts'
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Two influential Republicans are warning the White House that President Obama's use of executive orders to bypass Congress before his State of the Union speech is blatantly unconstitutional.
Obama launched a pre-emptive strike Tuesday morning in his protracted battles with the GOP by raising the minimum wage for federal contract workers with a stroke of his pen.
'I think it's a constitutional violation,' conservative Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa said Tuesday on CNN.
'We have a minimum wage. Congress has set it. For the president to simply declare "I'm going to change this law that Congress has passed" is unconstitutional.'
'We’ve never had a president with that level of audacity and that level of contempt for his own oath of office,' King added.
And House Speaker John Boehner seemed to follow suit during a news conference Tuesday on Capitol Hill.
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While his staffers were busy polishing his State
of the Union speech, Obama was busy sending Congress a message: Do it
my way or be ignored
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Obama will deliver his annual speech Tuesday night and is expected to demand a nationwide minimum-wage hike for ever worker
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House Speaker John Boehner warned Tuesday that
raising workers' minimum salaries by executive order was likely a
Constitutional violation that would bring a response from Congress
'We're going to watch very closely,' he said of the White House's newfound pen-stroke approach to governing, 'because there's a Constitution that we all take an oath to, including him, and following that Constitution is the basis for our republic, and we shouldn't put that in jeopardy.'
Boehner reminded reporters that Congress holds the government's purse-strings, and that his party isn't afraid to tug them tightly if Obama doesn't come to heel.
'There are options available to us,' he said, adding that Republicans would 'have a discussion about that' during a retreat that begins Wednesday.
Boehner also noted what some economists say is a relationship between minimum wage increases and job losses among young and unskilled minorities in the workplace.
'I used to be an employer,' he said. 'When you raise the cost of something, you get less of it.'
'We know from increases in the minimum wage in the past that hundreds of thousands of low-income Americans have lost their jobs, and so the very people the president purports to help are the ones who are going to get hurt by this.'
But Senate Democrats fired back, voicing support for Obama's choice to raise contractors' wages on his own.
'Increasing the minimum wage for federal contract workers is an important first step toward leveling the playing field for all workers,' Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren said.
'Now it’s time for Congress to take action, so that everyone who works hard and plays by the rules can earn enough to make ends meet.'
Her fellow Massachusettsan Sen. Ed Markey called a stagnant minimum earning level 'a war against wages.'
'We need to increase the minimum wage for all workers,' Markey said Tuesday.
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Almost showtime: President Obama will deliver
his sixth State of the Union speech Tuesday night amid congressional
concerns that his 'I have a pen' warnings threaten to shove legislators
to the sidelines amid a flurry of executive orders
Obama's surprising move on wages hikes the minimum by 39 per cent for companies using their employees to service contracts with the U.S. government.
The change, from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour, won't affect the estimated 2.65 million civilians who work directly on the government payroll.
But private companies large and small that want to do business with Uncle Sam will have to certify that they comply, or risk losing their contracts.
According to the Obama administration's Office of Personnel Management, some federal employees earn less than the president's desired minimum wage.
Including base pay and supplemental income based on the cost of living where they live and work, full-time federal employees at the lowest end of the pay scale earn as little as $20,527 per year, a wage equal to $9.86 per hour.
Obama is sure to ask Congress to extend his minimum wage increase to the entire nation's workforce during Tuesday night's speech. Yet his pre-emptive strike on one of his pet issues is a unilateral move of the kind Obama has repeatedly promised to make, circumventing Congress whenever it doesn't go along with whatever policy objectives he chooses to lay before them.
'We’re not just going to be waiting for legislation in order to make sure that we’re providing Americans the kind of help they need,' a frustrated Obama said on January 14 as he convened his cabinet in a public show of force.
'I've got a pen and I've got a phone,' he warned. 'And I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward.'
The implied threat behind the president's mighty-pen strategy hasn't been lost on Capitol Hill's most vocal Republicans, and he seemed to reinforce it Monday with a tweet featuring a photo of a pen – although the White House said it stood 'ready for editing his latest State of the Union draft.'
Obama's speech itself will be a history-dripping stemwinder delivered in a setting that boasts all the pageantry of a royal funeral. But in the age of tweets and 90-second cable news interviews, fewer and fewer Americans pay attention to lengthy policy speeches.
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Occupy 2.0: Obama is expected to call for a
higher minimum wage and permanently longer unemployment benefits as part
of a strategy attacking 'income inequality' across the United States
While the political drama that follows Obama's demands may be interesting, the speech itself promises little but campaign-style bluster likely designed as a preface to the campaigner-in-chief's next populist swing through friendly political climes and their fawning audiences.
Only 41 per cent of Democrats polled by Fox News last week said they planned to 'watch or listen to the speech carefully,' and that's Obama's high water mark.
Barely half as many Republicans – 22 per cent – told pollsters they intend to tune in, along with 29 per cent of political independents.
It's just as well, since a Gallup poll released Monday found that the issue Americans most want to see addressed in Tuesday's speech is their overall dissatisfaction with government in Washington.
And the words Obama speaks – a laundry list of wishes spanning the governmental universe from health care and gun control to U.S. policy on Iran and the minimum wage – will tell less of the story than the gamesmanship behind them.
The issues themselves, which also include a call for a new approach to immigration, a demand for the next no-strings-attached increase in the federal debt ceiling, and a long-term extension of unemployment benefits, will also serve to give Congressional Democrats something positive to run on in November while Republicans pummel them with Obamacare references.
Obama's handlers have tamped down expectations in recent days.
The scene in the Oval Office as the President met w his senior advisors today. Dan Pfeiffer on the left pic.twitter.com/VOHeSBFcik
— petesouza (@petesouza) January 28, 2014
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ENVIRONMENT: Coal-fired power plants are still
on the chopping block as Obama defends his administration's full-court
press on global warming - despite Washington's sub-freezing late January
temperatures
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NO NUKES IN IRAN: The president is pushing his
Iran deal while Senate Democrats sit on sanctions as a disincentive to a
Middle Eastern bait-and-switch
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CORPORATE TAXES: The U.S. has the world's
highest business tax rates, and Obama will push a fig-leaf approach to
fixing it by tying lower rates to costly cancellations of tax deductions
Dan Pfeiffer, Obama's senior adviser, said two days ago on Fox News Sunday that 'the Republican Congress is not going to rubber-stamp the president's agenda' and 'the president is not going to sign the Republican Congress' agenda. So we have to find areas where we can work together.'
Similarly, he wrote Saturday in a message to the the White House's email list that the State of the Union speech would be summed up by the three words 'opportunity, action, and optimism,' two of which seem calibrated to suggest a tepid forecast.
Even the generally Obama-friendly New York Times predicted that Obama will pursue a 'modest agenda' in his speech.
But Pfeiffer's momentary nod to 'action' was enough to bring him to repeat Obama's taunt.
'President Obama has a pen and he has a phone,' he wrote, 'and he will use them to take executive action and enlist every American – business owners and workers, mayors and state legislators, young people, veterans, and folks in communities from across the country – in the project to restore opportunity for all.'
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TAKE TWO: Obama's 2013 State of the Union was a
laundry-list of policy objectives that were swallowed up by mounting
scandals as the year progressed
OBAMA'S WISH LIST: Some of what the president wants
The
U.S. President will outline a host of policy objectives during Tuesday
night's State of the Union, including many that – despite his 'I've got a
pen' rhetoric – won't go anywhere without bipartisan buy-in from
Congress.
Immigration – The U.S. Senate has passed a version of Obama's favored plan to institute a lengthy path to citizenship for more than 11 million people living in the United States illegally. But the House of Representatives, led by Republicans, has refused to take up the measure. But several factions in the House leadership have softened recently, suggesting a way forward if Obama abandons the idea of citizenship for illegal immigrants in favor of a new legal-residency standard. He desperately wants to sign something into law. With Republicans expected to gain seats in both houses of Congress this fall, 2014 may be his only chance.
Environment – Green groups are betting the president will double down on his EPA's historic efforts to classify carbon dioxide as a pollutant and re-emphasize that policies targeting the coal industry are good for the planet. He may also draw a new line in the sand on the Keystone XL oil pipeline, a project that has become a divisive environmental touchstone since Obama green-lighted a portion of it in March 2012.
Health Care – Obama will almost certainly offer a passionate defense of his Obamacare law, pointing to at least one handpicked guest in the gallery as a success story for the troubled insurance overhaul. But at least two Republican members of Congress, Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn and Texas Rep. Steve Stockman, have invited constituents who they say have lost their insurance because of the Affordable Care Act.
Education – Obama lumped a call for universal, government-funded pre-K programs into his 2013 State of the Union, but the idea has seen little movement at the federal level. He is likely to renew that demand, calling it a gateway for poor children to access the beginnings of the economic ladder that is already open to children whose parents are better-off. And the nationwide Common Core curriculum program, touted by the president as a success story and derided by conservatives as an intrusive overreach, will likely see a hat-tip from the president.
Taxes – Obama will renew his repeated calls since the 2012 campaign for a realignment of corporate taxes that caps rates at 28 per cent instead of the current 39.1 per cent. Republicans, though, see a bait-and-switch: Overall tax receipts would increase since the president would bundle the idea with a host of trade-offs including the cancellation of countless income-tax deductions. Meanwhile, the millions of small businesses that pay taxes as individuals – not as corporations – would lose the deductions without getting a rate cut in return.
Minimum Wage – Obama will use his annual address to demand a law gradually increasing America's hourly minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10, a rate that he believes will put all full-time U.S. wage-earners above the poverty level.With a stroke of his pen on Tuesday, he made that $10.10 figure the minimum wage for new federal government contract workers. Organized labor loves the proposal since many of their negotiated contracts are indexed to the minimum wage – meaning that millions of unionized employees earning more than the minimum would get wage hikes too. Many Republicans caution that raising the wage floor would cost jobs since employers have to staff their businesses with the same payroll resources, leaving room for fewer workers on payrolls.
Immigration – The U.S. Senate has passed a version of Obama's favored plan to institute a lengthy path to citizenship for more than 11 million people living in the United States illegally. But the House of Representatives, led by Republicans, has refused to take up the measure. But several factions in the House leadership have softened recently, suggesting a way forward if Obama abandons the idea of citizenship for illegal immigrants in favor of a new legal-residency standard. He desperately wants to sign something into law. With Republicans expected to gain seats in both houses of Congress this fall, 2014 may be his only chance.
Environment – Green groups are betting the president will double down on his EPA's historic efforts to classify carbon dioxide as a pollutant and re-emphasize that policies targeting the coal industry are good for the planet. He may also draw a new line in the sand on the Keystone XL oil pipeline, a project that has become a divisive environmental touchstone since Obama green-lighted a portion of it in March 2012.
Health Care – Obama will almost certainly offer a passionate defense of his Obamacare law, pointing to at least one handpicked guest in the gallery as a success story for the troubled insurance overhaul. But at least two Republican members of Congress, Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn and Texas Rep. Steve Stockman, have invited constituents who they say have lost their insurance because of the Affordable Care Act.
Education – Obama lumped a call for universal, government-funded pre-K programs into his 2013 State of the Union, but the idea has seen little movement at the federal level. He is likely to renew that demand, calling it a gateway for poor children to access the beginnings of the economic ladder that is already open to children whose parents are better-off. And the nationwide Common Core curriculum program, touted by the president as a success story and derided by conservatives as an intrusive overreach, will likely see a hat-tip from the president.
Taxes – Obama will renew his repeated calls since the 2012 campaign for a realignment of corporate taxes that caps rates at 28 per cent instead of the current 39.1 per cent. Republicans, though, see a bait-and-switch: Overall tax receipts would increase since the president would bundle the idea with a host of trade-offs including the cancellation of countless income-tax deductions. Meanwhile, the millions of small businesses that pay taxes as individuals – not as corporations – would lose the deductions without getting a rate cut in return.
Minimum Wage – Obama will use his annual address to demand a law gradually increasing America's hourly minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10, a rate that he believes will put all full-time U.S. wage-earners above the poverty level.With a stroke of his pen on Tuesday, he made that $10.10 figure the minimum wage for new federal government contract workers. Organized labor loves the proposal since many of their negotiated contracts are indexed to the minimum wage – meaning that millions of unionized employees earning more than the minimum would get wage hikes too. Many Republicans caution that raising the wage floor would cost jobs since employers have to staff their businesses with the same payroll resources, leaving room for fewer workers on payrolls.
President Obama's pen—ready for editing his latest State of the Union draft. http://t.co/GD8K6aq7lH #InsideSOTU, pic.twitter.com/RcreiemdaT
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) January 27, 2014
The ultimatum approach hasn't sat well with leading Republicans on Capitol Hill.'It sounds vaguely like a threat.' the tea party-linked Kentucky Senator Rand Paul said Sunday on CNN, 'and I think it also has a certain amount of arrogance, in the sense that one of the fundamental principles of our country were the checks and balances.'
'It wasn’t supposed to be easy to pass legislation,' he said. 'You had to debate and convince people. ... The president’s not allowed to write legislation, he’s not allowed to amend legislation.'
Mitch McConnell, the Bluegrass State's other senator and the GOP's leader in the upper chamber, said Sunday on Fox News that Obama has refused to see the Republican Party's gains in Congress as a sign from the public.
'This president, it seems to me,' McConnell said, 'after the 2010 election when the American public issued a – shall we say – restraining order, the president has sort of hung out on the left and tried to get what he wants through the bureaucracy as opposed to moving to the political center.'
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New minimum-wage demands will be
front-and-center, a push that will benefit union workers whose salaries
are indexed to the wage floor
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IMMIGRATION REFORM: The president has been
sympathetic to illegal-immigrant activists fasting and demonstrating for
a path to citizenship
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OBAMACARE: The Affordable Care Act's early
failures are still top-of-mind, bringing a presidential pivot meant to
push success stories instead of creating more national punchlines
What Obama wants, Republican observers say, is a free pass to lay down his legacy in the face of a shifting electorate that has wearied of his poetic style and craves textbook-prose solutions.
'He may be getting what he wants on gay rights and global warming,' MailOnline heard from a GOP strategist in Washington who declined to be named. 'That's just because he can push regulations when Congress won't back him.'
'But look at Iran, and look at the minimum wage fight – and, god, look at Obamacare, and immigration,' he said. 'he can't just wave his magic wand and make a bill appear on his desk. That's got to drive him nuts.'
Annoyed or not, Obama is expected to outline strategies on Tuesday night that don't require Congress to act, in addition to pleading for legislative outcomes that he can't generate on his own.
Previous efforts to shepherd legislation through Congress, even on topics where the public seems to agree with him – such as expanded background checks on gun purchases and comprehensive immigration reform – have almost predictably stalled.
It was Senate Democrats, led by New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, who stymied Obama's efforts in Iran with threats of a new round of sanctions if the Islamic regime fails to halt its nuclear weapons program.
'It's almost like Obama's trying to convince his adversaries that he's not such a bad guy,' offered the Republican operative, 'but some of his friends are stepping in and saying, "Not so fast, there."
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