Obama Already Busy Grabbing New Powers

Dec. 5, 2012
by Keith Koffler

His reelection is less than a month old, and President Obama is already busy concocting new power grabs.

He wants to remove a portion of the power of the purse from Congress by granting himself the ability to raise the debt ceiling, subject to a two-thirds disapproval vote in Congress, which basically means he can raise it at will. If Bush had tried this, Democrats would be sobbing anguished tears all over the floors of Congress about the imperial presidency.

And the White House, in an unusual interference with congressional procedure, has weighed in with support for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s effort to roll back the filibuster, which currently requires 60 votes to end.

“The President has said many times that the American people are demanding action,” White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said in a statement to The Huffington Post. “They want to see progress, not partisan delay games. That hasn’t changed, and the President supports Majority Leader Reid’s efforts to reform the filibuster process.”

If Bush tried to move the worlds “greatest deliberative body” toward a simple majority vote to pass legislation while his Party controlled the place, he’d be derided by Democrats for trying to seize new power and ruin the Senate.

Oh, wait, they did that.



Hypocrites, one and all of them.