What Could Sanders Accomplish By Executive Action Alone?

Which Democratic candidate would be this bold, would do what any Republican in the country would do — simply dare to say, "Make it so" when executive power is clear and available?

by Thomas Neuburger

During the 2016 primary race it became apparent that Bernie Sanders was offering more than just a revolt against entrenched elites; he offered a revolution in the way our government functions. That revolution would be executed along three branches or lines of action, two of which he had complete and personal control of.

First, he would revolutionize the norms by which the past forty years of neoliberal government operated — years that started with Reagan and continued through each administration since — by not doing what each administration before him had done as a matter of course.

These acts of not-doing would not only save the nation enormous grief, they would save progressive activists and voters enormous time and energy. From this 2015 piece on the subject, here's my imagined Sanders speech on "What I Will Never Do":

If you elect me president, here's what I will never do —

    ▪ You can count on me never to push a plan to cut Social Security and Medicare. Not one person outside of government will have to spend one minute trying to prevent me from privatizing — or cutting in any way — these vital programs. Not one minute. And if Congress proposes these cuts and it reaches my desk, you won't have to spend one minute asking me to veto that proposal. It's vetoed the minute it arrives.

    ▪ I will never negotiate a so-called "trade" deal that sends American jobs across our borders. No one will have to spend one minute asking me to stop a deal that hurts American workers. I will support only trade deals that increase American jobs, that create new workers in this country, that increase our balance of payments, and nothing less.

    ▪ No one will have to spend one minute stopping me from granting coal, oil and gas leases on lands or in waters controlled by the Department of the Interior. Not one minute. Drilling in the Arctic? You won't even have to ask. The answer is already No. New coal leases? Not one. Dangerous and deadly-to-the-climate offshore drilling leases? Those days are over.

    Soon I will tell you what I will do to aggressively bring down carbon emissions. But if I don't start here, with what I won't do, how will you know I'm serious?

    ▪ You will never see me even contemplate extending tax breaks for the very rich, as we saw all too often in our recent past — for example, during the negotiations to extend the Bush tax cuts, or negotiations at the end of the last fiscal year. Any such deal that reaches my desk will go straight back to Congress for renegotiation.

    If Congress wants a bill, they can give me one I can sign. If they want to shut down the government over tax breaks for the very very wealthy, they will shut it down, and I will explain it that way to the American people. If they want me to sign a bill, any bill, they need to understand — tax breaks for the rich can never be a part of it.

In other words, you'll never have to lobby me to not do what I said I would never do. You can spend your precious time, your precious energy, in other ways. There are many things I will do as well. Some I will do alone, using the power of the Executive Branch. And some I will ask your help to do because we need help from others. But the things I listed above, and many more besides, will never be contemplated.

I hope you agree that sparing you the constant effort to stop these wrong acts is indeed an accomplishment, and one you'll be glad, even eager, to have. It's one I'll certainly be glad and eager to give you.

Thank you.

I could have added that Sanders will never do what every president for the last third of a century as done — pardon or fail to prosecute criminal behavior by other elites, including those in their own donor class (like Jon Corzine, one donor-criminal that Barack Obama's administration failed to prosecute). 

Unlike most other Democratic candidates in the current cycle, Bernie Sanders won't just save you from Donald Trump (or any other Republican candidate who rings the populist bell), he'll also save you years of time you can spend more productively than endless trying to please-please-please-beg-and-force him not to do what Democrats like Barack Obama seemed eager do almost daily.

But this was just the first part of an imagined three-part speech.

The second part would deal with what Sanders could do — should he be so bold — by executive action alone, without Congress, without leaders like Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell reaching in to muck up the operation. There's much more possible under executive action than any Democrat will allow you to contemplate — or if you do contemplate it, they'll admonish you that it's "best to pass a law instead" (because that's what Republicans always do when they have executive power, right?).

The third part of the speech would detail how Sanders would solve problems that could only be solved with true progressive legislation despite the machinations of conservative Democrats (including Nancy Pelosi; she deserves that appellation now) and their Republican partners.

Let's hold the "How I Will Pass Legislation" topic for another time; it touches on Sanders' unique theory of change. (For a preview of that theory, listen to the first part of Sanders' interview with Joe Rogan.)

What Could a President Sanders Do by Executive Order?

Here's a sample of what Sanders will do (not could do, will do) by executive order as soon as he's elected. This is from the latest "Bern Notice" authored by Sanders campaign writer David Sirota (emphasis mine):

Here’s an open secret: right now, your federal tax dollars subsidize giant CEO pay packages as well as corporate efforts to bust unions and offshore jobs. But when Donald Trump is defeated in 2020, that will end with a stroke of President Bernie Sanders’ pen -- and big corporations like Amazon, Honeywell and Boeing will have to either change their behavior, or lose their government largesse.

At issue is Bernie’s brand new Workplace Democracy Plan, set to be introduced by Bernie today at the Iowa AFL-CIO convention. The initiative is a comprehensive package of reforms designed to strengthen workers’ ability to form unions.

One provision in the plan is a pledge to immediately issue an executive order banning federal contracts from being awarded to companies “that outsource jobs overseas, pay workers less than $15 an hour without benefits, refuse to remain neutral in union organizing efforts, pay executives over 150 times more than average workers, hire workers to replace striking workers, or close businesses after workers vote to unionize.”

If I'm not mistaken, the U.S. government is the nation's largest employer, by a lot. Just as a federal Jobs Guarantee program would set a de facto floor on wages and working conditions by directly competing with the private sector for workers and offering more than their current "junk jobs" offer (explained by Stephanie Kelton here), a ban on federal contractors who do any of a list of wrong things, a ban that can be enforced by executive action alone, would change corporate behavior immediately and effectively.

This just scratches the surface. A total ban on new federal oil-and-gas leases, with an aggressive expiry of current ones, started immediately, would immediately change the economics of the fossil fuel market. Much of the much-discussed Student Loan Forgiveness program could be executed without legislation, since the government holds most student debt.

And so on.

Who Among the Current Democratic Candidates Is Bold Enough to Act Without Congress?

Despite all this, the question one should be asking isn't, "What can be done by a bold Democratic president?" though the list of what could be done is wonderful to contemplate.

The question one should ask instead is, "Who among the current candidates would dare use executive power in this way?" Would Harris? Would Biden?

Would even Warren, with her love of the inside game and use of others as leverage, dare to act when the only leverage she had was the power of the president to simply "make it so"?

If for you the Democratic primary is more than a year-long reality game show, with contestants striving to to outdo each other in capturing the public eye, in entertaining us spectators during our once-every-four-years Survivor-like ritual cage match — if the Democratic primary is more than just that for you — shouldn't the willingness to act be a primary, perhaps the primary, consideration in choosing who will run the executive branch for the next four years?

The question, it seems, almost answers itself.
 

How can Senate Dems deny Russ Feingold's cred for Foreign Relations while even thinking about letting Holy Joe keep stinking up Homeland Security?

How great would it be to have Russ Feingold (seen here speaking at his home-state University of Wisconsin in March) chairing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee? Of course, not everyone thinks so.

by Ken

I hope I'm worrying unnecessarily, but when I heard that President-elect Obama is supposed to have told Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that he would really like Holy Joe Lieberman to continue caucusing with the Democrats, I interpreted that to mean that he would really like Holy Joe Lieberman to continue caucusing with the Democrats.

What I'm hearing, in other words, is that if the majority leader is of a mind to grant the president-elect his wish, then the wish is that he "make it so," as Captain Jean-Luc Picard used to say on the bridge of the Enterprise. Meaning that, if His Holiness's condition for continuing to caucus with the Democrats is that he be allowed to hold onto his Homeland Security chairmanship, then Senator Reid's maneuvering room has shrunk to near-zero -- again, provided that he's of a mind to make the new president's wish come true. (In the past, Democratic congressional leaders have frequently made it clear that they don't take marching orders even from a president of their own party.)

THE SIMPLE SOLUTION TO THE HOLY JOE PROBLEM

Actually, my favorite solution to the Holy Joe Problem (which Howie reviewed just yesterday) comes from my upstate New York colleague Andrew White, and it strikes me as simple, logical, comprehensive -- and elegant.

Andrew, himself an active toiler in the trenches of Democratic Party warfare, accepts that our Joe may now be experiencing yet another change of heart. He just wants to be sure that Joe understands there are consequences to the series of choices he has previously made, which added up to abandoning his old party. Those choices include ignoring the result of the Democratic primary when he ran for reelection to his Connecticut Senate seat in 2006, then becoming a centerpiece of the 2008 Republican presidential attack machine (generously sliming the Democratic nominee at what sure seemed like every opportunity), while also campaigning actively for Republicans including Senators Norm Coleman and Susan Collins.

If our Joe chooses now to rejoin the Democratic fold, Andrew says, "I would personally be tempted to reject him but would have no objections to accepting his humble request to caucus with Democrats." Just with certain understandings, based on all those choices Senator Lieberman has made in the past. His new choice can be accommodated just as soon as all the newly elected Democratic senators have been incorporated into the caucus and assigned their seniority rankings. No doubt the leadership will be able to find some sort of open committee assignments for their junior-most member, once all the more senior Democrats -- people who actually ran and were elected as Democrats, after all -- are accommodated.

Andrew stresses that he has no wish to couch this as "punishment" or "revenge." It's just a matter of our Joe having made choices, of his own free will -- and then establishing that choices have consequences. His plan strikes me as perfect from a conceptual standpoint, and by happy coincidence it winds up fucking His Holiness.

(Note, though, that if I'm right and everyone else is wrong about what the president-elect is wishing for, then this option is off the table.)

Right now I'm thinking about Holy Joe's situation with particular reference to the contrast with the developing controversy over Russ Feingold's possible accession to the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The possibility, you'll recall, comes into play with the election of current chairman Joe Biden to the vice presidency, and the stated intention of next-in-line Chris Dodd to stick with his chairmanship of the Banking Committee in view of the gravity of the tasks facing it, and now the growing chatter about next-in-line John Kerry being in line to become secretary of state. Nextest-in-line is . . . none other than our Russ.

Now you or I might say, "And who better for the job? Who has a better record for being right about foreign affairs over, say, the last eight years (to pick a random time frame)?"

Needless to say, though, that isn't what a certain number of Senate Dems, not to mention the Obama transition team, seem to be saying.

As the Washington Post's Al Kamen reports on this "Uncomfortable State of Affairs" in today's "In the Loop":

[Senator Feingold] tends to approach foreign policy and related matters from, let’s say, a leftward direction. Feingold was the only senator to vote against the Patriot Act and is the leading advocate of pulling out of Iraq. That means the Obama administration, in addition to getting smacked around from the right on foreign policy matters, could find itself hammered from the left as well.

Can’t wait.

Now, the reality is that Russ as chairman of Foreign Relations isn't going to be able to do anything he can't line up the votes for. There would unquestionably be a difference, though, in the way foreign policy choices are framed among committee Democrats -- a difference that, again, sounds perfectly swell to me. Not that I necessarily expect the Obama administration to be making such a proposition, but it would be a lot harder to ram through the next crack-brained war plan cooked up by some think-tank crackpot.

I admit I find myself wondering, when was the last time a Democratic senator was passed over for a major committee chairmanship on the ground that he's too conservative? But even that isn't the issue. On the crucial issues of foreign policy, Russ has been right.

Still, I wonder how anyone can seriously consider allowing Joe Lieberman to continue the disastrously inept job he's done as Homeland Security chair -- at this point I'd have to say that he's as responsible as the Bush regime itself for making the very phrase homeland security a bad joke -- while campaigning to keep Russ out of the Foreign Relations chair.


UPDATE: EVAN BAYH EXPLAINS WHY HOLY JOE
SHOULDN'T GO -- IS ANYBODY ELSE BUYING IT?

Rachel Maddow had Smilin' Evan on her show tonight to explain. He did allow that Holy Joe "crossed a line," and "will have to apologize." (I do believe he actually stopped smiling for a moment. Hey, folks, this is serious.) But he insists it's important to have Democratic unity for the new president's agenda, and warns that if Joe is "punished" (this of course is exactly why Andrew White is so adamant that the matter not be framed as "punishment"), he's going to become "embittered," and he may then vote against the Democrats on critical votes just to get back at them, or might even quit the Senate altogether and be replaced by a "real Republican" appointed by Connecticut Gov. Jodi Rell.

Since His Holiness's vote can never be counted on in the crunch, the first possibility doesn't worry me much, and as to the second, honestly I have a lot more faith in Governor Rell's judgment than in Holy Joe's. I can't help thinking that whoever she might appoint would be an upgrade over Holy Joe. After all, she would presumably hope that her appointee could have a fighting chance in the ensuing special election, where the Democrats would in any case be able to retake the seat in time for Year Three of the Obama administration.

Really and truly, Joe Lieberman is bad for democracy. It's been trying enough listening to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid tell us for two years that His Holiness "votes with us most of the time," the one teensy exception being, you know, that unpleasantness in Iraq. But this past weekend Senator Reid upped the ante, going so far as to say, "Joe Lieberman is one of the most progressive people ever to come from the state of Connecticut."

Now this is just silly. Everyone in Connecticut knows that our Joe made his ascent in state politics by running to the right of not just every Democrat in sight, but even of state Republicans -- most famously bludgeoning his way into the Senate by red-baiting his far more liberal (not to mention decent) opponent, Republican Sen. Lowell Weicker.

Now the folks at ThinkProgress have taken a closer look at His Holiness's record, and concluded: "While Lieberman has supported progressive policies in the past, including advocating on behalf of the environment and civil rights, his recent record demonstrates that he’s a progressive no more."

Anyway, when Senator Bayh finished his "explanation," mostly I found myself breathing a sigh of relief that Joe Biden is the vice president-elect.

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