HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: Closest to Needs of People

As most of you know, members of the United States House of Representatives are elected to represent the interests of the people, businesses and institutions of congressional districts in the states and territories of our nation.  Congresspersons are the closest federal government officials to the needs, wants and expectations of the citizens of our country.  Representatives, of course, are restricted by the confines of the U.S.
Constitution, their oath of office, and the national interest.

Accordingly, it is irresponsible for the president of the United States to attack the House of Representatives as a do-nothing, uncooperative body, as he and the Democrat cabal have so often done.  It is irresponsible for Obama to usurp House members’ constitutional authority as he has done via the power of his “pen and phone” – as he likes to put it.  As spelled out in the Constitution, it is the responsibility of the legislature to formulate and document the laws of our land.  It is the President’s responsibility to administer and enforce those laws. 

Amazingly, our president – reportedly a Constitutional scholar – has this Constitutional role reversed.  He has been literally making laws, changing laws, modifying laws, ignoring laws, etc. set by Congress – in clear violation of his oath of office.  I’m not making this up.  The so-called unproductive 113th House of Representatives has passed and forwarded over 370 bills to the Senate for approval, most of which have been blocked by Democrat Senate Leader Harry Reid.  Clearly, he and Obama are in cahoots – to thwart the desires of the American people as represented by their Congresspersons – and to keep these bills off of Obama’s desk for his veto.

The president’s vehicle for lawmaking is the Executive Order – which plays on his administrative authority to enforce and regulate the laws of our land, of the Congress.  However, he has taken this administrative authority way beyond reasonable interpretation of the Constitution.  He is, in effect, making new laws and/or making major changes and/or additions to existing laws – that favor his particular agenda and ideology. 

For example, the quasi-amnesty order that he just signed will give quasi-citizen benefits and employment rights to five million illegal immigrants – thus denying jobs to legal American citizens.  And of course, all costs will be added to the government deficit and debt – to be paid for by the taxpayers of many generations.

The president likes to counteract this argument by saying that the legal employment of currently undocumented workers will contribute to the economy by their work (true) and the payment of taxes, like other citizens.  However, most of their jobs will fall into the lower three quintiles of wage earners, the majority of whom receive more in federal and state benefits than they pay out in taxes (as was reported earlier). 

What’s more, it is illogical to reward illegal aliens for breaking the law.

Another example of presidential usurpation of congressional authority is Obama’s ongoing manipulation – even rewriting – of the Affordable Care Act provisions (Obamacare.) After six years of this president’s premier “accomplishment,” this bill – which was forced on the American people by the Democrat controlled 112th Congress and the Obama Administration via scandalous deceptions – is unsustainable and headed for de facto insolvency.

The time has come for the American people to demand that their voices be heard in Washington, in the Congress, in the White House, in the Administration, in the Supreme Court.  The House of Representatives collectively represents the will of the people and should be the primary driving force of the American government. Americans of every stripe should understand this and communicate regularly and responsibly with their congressional representatives.

America’s founders never intended for the presidency to be an all powerful, authoritarian dictatorship.

Let us hope that the new, 114th Congress will take up the challenge in January 2015 and return the power of the US Government to We the People!

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/c-spancommunity/5622228378/