The Idea Man

The Obama Administration is less than 100 days old and the proposals have been flying out of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave fast and furiously. As a conservative I seem to be on the wrong side of every issue that President Obama has proposed.

I may be on the wrong side but I am impressed how fast the U.S. Congress has taken up his proposals and converted them into policies. Harry Reid has led the Senate and Nanci Pelosi has led the House to promote and pass these new policies with ease. I was thinking to myself that The President and the Congress were working well together – then it dawned on me…

The President isn’t working with The Congress he is basically letting them create the bills without any real input from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. He is just creating the original ideas. He is delegating the individual content of each bill to Reid and Pelosi. President Obama is – “The Idea Man.”

If you are a Democrat is 2009 then you got to love this strong President proposing ideas that are quickly put into practice by the Democratic Congress.

If you are a Republican in 2009 then you got to be worried about how the heck we are going to pay for all of these new ideas.

Do you know who should be more worried than the Republicans???

President Obama is running the Executive branch like a CEO runs a corporation. The CEO sets the path and then he/she delegates the work to the different divisions to execute the plan that will lead the company down the correct path.

The only problem is the Presidency is supposed to lead the Executive branch. He/she is supposed to be a gatekeeper providing checks and balances for the other 2 branches of government.

In effect the President isn’t allowed to just propose the ideas and then get out of the way.  The President has a duty to push back on policies being created by the Congress. If he doesn’t like any items in any bill that comes out of Congress then he is supposed to veto that bill.

It would be different if he actually sent more than just an idea to Congress, if he had sent his people to Congress to actually express his idea, and to make sure his concerns are in the final bill then it would be a different story. But what has really happened is that the Executive branch has literally join the Legislative branch of government.

These 2 branches aren’t working together – they are the same entity. Neither branch has the power to contradict the other. Neither branch is stepping up to the plate and acting as a check or a balance to the other entity.

The results are obvious to everyone outside of the D.C. beltway. The bills coming out of the U.S. Congress that the President has been signing are really, really bad. As an example look at the economic stimulus bill that just passed, a trillion dollars of one sided politics. The President thought the minor issues in the bill should be overlooked.

These minor issues are major problems for Main Street. Especially after the “stimulus” money is spent. Then the real fun begins – when your state needs new money to fund the federal programs that are peppered throughout these bills, programs that you have “accidentally” signed up for – who is going to pay for that?

Do you know who should be more concerned than the Republicans about funding these programs in the future – the activist courts?

That’s right those same courts that spend so much time overturning the people’s wishes. So much time setting their own agenda – after all they are the 3rd branch of the government. It is their job to keep the other 2 branches in check.

Why will the courts get involved? That is easy… The states will be suing the Federal Government for the funds to continue operating these new programs.

Isn’t it ironic that the courts in a just a few short years will be spending the majority of their time trying to decipher exactly what the President intended when the bills were moving through the legislative process? They will see the “ideas” in the notes but there will be no other information because the Executive branch forgot it’s obligation to the people.

Being “The Idea Man” is awesome. For the American people to have a President with ideas that he believes in is awesome. To have fresh ideas that can be hashed out in public, to be debated, to be decided on their merits, to have ideas that are bold is awesome.

Unfortunately the “ideas part” of the job is the fun part, eventually either the Legislative branch or the Executive branch of our government has to start looking at what the other one is doing. Otherwise the courts are going to be a very busy place over the next few years.