Unprecedented Flurry of Executive Orders:
In October 2020, then presidential candidate Joe Biden, during an NBC town hall, had this to say about the use of executive orders to bypass Congress and the will of the American people: “there are certain things you can’t do by executive order unless you’re a dictator. We are a Democracy, we need consensus,” he concluded.
I don’t often agree with Joe Biden, but candidate Joe Biden was absolutely right. I didn’t support previous presidential use of executive orders and I don’t support them now. Unfortunately, candidate Joe Biden then is at odds with President Joe Biden now. Since being sworn in on January 20th, Mr. Biden has signed a flurry of directives, using executive actions 48 times during his first few weeks in office. According to the Washington Post, Mr. Biden has signed three times the number of executive orders his predecessors had at this same point in their presidencies. These executive actions have allowed Mr. Biden to enact parts of his liberal, jobs-killing socialist agenda by ignoring congressional opposition and circumventing the legislative process entirely. Such unilateral action is a complete overreach and a power grab never envisioned by our Founding Fathers.
Throughout his campaign and since being sworn in, Mr. Biden has repeatedly stated he would like to work across party lines to resolve differences. Mr. Biden’s aggressive use and abuse of executive orders demonstrate something completely different. His early reliance on using executive orders to achieve results that he knows would never get through Congress is not a prescription on how to be a consensus builder.