Politico reports that:
House progressives are planning to call on President Joe Biden this week to use his executive power to declare climate change a national emergency and to ban fossil fuel drilling on public lands.
The request from the Congressional Progressive Caucus comes as many Democratic clean energy priorities have stalled in Congress. The push for the sweeping use of the executive powers expected from the group of nearly 100 lawmakers on Thursday will also touch issues such as student loan debt, voting rights and immigration.
Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), a caucus member, told POLITICO that calling on Biden to declare a climate emergency would be one of the “centerpiece” actions to headline their executive order plan.
Naturally, these ideas are bonkers on the merits. But they’re also bonkers structurally. The “House progressives” in question are legislators. They sit in Congress. These questions are for them, and their branch, to consider. I often describe our contemporary Congress as “supine” or “indifferent,” but this is far, far worse than that.
Read the words again. “Nearly 100 lawmakers,” Politico writes, are urging a “sweeping use of the executive powers” because their “priorities have stalled in Congress.” Translated into blunt-speak, this means that, having failed to get their own way, nearly half of the Democratic caucus is sitting around in the legislature figuring out ways that the executive branch can usurp their role. “Stalls in Congress” is another way of saying “doesn’t have the votes.” By appealing to the White House to step in, these 100-or-so figures are not only asking for their institution to be ignored, they are attempting to render the majority that disagrees with them utterly powerless. If the president can step in when Congress doesn’t do what he wants, then there’s no point having a Congress in the first place.
This behavior will never cease to be extraordinary and sad, and Americans who care about the integrity of their constitutional order should refuse to put up with it.