OPINION
MARCH 9, 2017
KANABEC COUNTY TIMES
5
www.moraminn.com
Approach the good news of the surplus with caution The recent release of the February forecast shows Minnesota is doing well, and will have an estimated surplus of $1.65 billion in 2018-19. I’m very proud of the hard work done over the past five years. Minnesota has overcome significant budget deficits and now has a surplus of $1.65 billion, a $250 million increase from the November forecast. However, while the current financial outlook is optimistic, there is still uncertainty that could negatively impact the financial standing of our state. Uncertainty State in Washington and federal policy Senator means we must remain cautious and be fiscally responsible. Federal Tony Lourey trade policy changes could have serious impacts on growth, and any h iin h changes healthcare spending could have significant repercussions for the state. Estimates of one Washington proposal on health care indicates that Minnesota will lose $5 billion in federal funding by 2021, creating a massive hole in the state budget. While the economy is stable now, the legislature must make responsible investments to ensure Minnesota maintains its economic health in the future. Now is the time to create a budget that will work for all Minnesotans. This means not only balanced investments in policies that support Minnesotans, but also rejecting drastic, unsustainable spending programs. In the Senate Taxes Committee alone, there has been more than $3 billion proposed in new spending - more than twice our surplus. Other proposals are looking to raid our budget reserve for non-emergency projects, potentially jeopardizing our recently restored credit score and Minnesota’s long-term fiscal health. We cannot sacrifice our hard-won economic stability for legislators’ pet projects. I want to focus on passing a budget that protects the state’s reserve in this time of uncertainty and focuses on legislation that improves quality of life for people across the state, such as a comprehensive transportation package, education investments, a sensible tax bill, and a jobs bill that will support all Minnesotans. Our focus must be on providing opportunity for ordinary Minnesotans who continue to be squeezed by an economy that has not been working for everyone. As in past sessions, I will continue to focus on strengthening the state through responsible spending. In the upcoming weeks, I look forward to working on legislation that is both fiscally responsible and beneficial to all Minnesotans. Tony Lourey is the Minnesota Senator for District 11 which includes Kroschel, Pomroy, Knife Lake, Whited, Arthur, Comfort, Brunswick and Grass Lake townships in Kanabec County.
What are ‘Executive Orders’? One of the issues in the 2016 presidential campaign was the use of executive orders by then President Obama. An executive order is loosely defined in the dictionary as an order from the president or a federal government agency which has the force of law. In the first 10 days in office, President Trump has issued It’s In Your a number of executive orders. Court The United States ConstituJudge tion does not exStephen Halsey pressly allow presidential executive orders. However, during the United States’ history, executive orders have been issued by nearly every president, including George Washington, Abraham Lincoln (Emancipation Proclamation), Harry Truman (federal control of steel mills), Bill Clinton (1999 Kosovo War), Franklin Delano Roosevelt (internment of Japanese-Americans), and Dwight Eisenhower (desegregation of public schools). Critics of presidential executive orders argue that such orders violate the Constitution and our threebranch form of government since Congress, as the law-making body, has the sole authority to make laws. A scorecard reveals nearly every president has issued executive orders: FDR issued 3,522, Ronald Reagan 381, Bill Clinton 364 and Barack Obama 275. Proponents of executive orders argue that there is a long history of such orders where Congress is deadlocked or unwilling to address an important issue or emergency (as in Category 2 below). I express no opinion on executive orders, but I will briefly discuss how the United States Supreme Court has addressed them. In the Youngstown Sheet case, the United States Supreme Court was asked to judge the validity of President Truman’s executive order calling for the seizure of steel mills just before a nationwide strike. “The indispensability of steel as a component of substantially all weapons and other war materials led the president to believe that the proposed work stoppage would immediately jeopardize our
national defense and that governmental seizure of the steel mills was necessary in order to assure the continued availability of steel.” President Truman’s rationale for the order did not withstand judicial scrutiny. In holding that President Truman’s order was unlawful, the United States Supreme Court explained that “the president’s power, if any, to issue [an executive] order must stem either from an act of Congress or from the Constitution itself.” The court concluded that no congressional act authorized President Truman to seize the mills; President Truman, in fact, did not rest on such congressional authorization. Instead, he relied on what he considered to be his presidential power “implied from the aggregate of his powers under the Constitution.” The Court rejected this argument. Justice Robert Jackson, in a concurring opinion (meaning an opinion that was not joined by a majority of the justices and, therefore, not binding), classified presidential powers into three general categories, which are summarized below. Even Justice Jackson admitted, these three categories were “somewhat over-simplified.” And, as the court stated in Dames & Moore v. Regan, a case decided after Youngstown Sheet, “it is doubtless the case that executive action in any particular instance falls, not neatly in one of three pigeonholes, but rather at some point along a spectrum running from explicit congressional authorization to explicit congressional prohibition.” Despite its oversimplification, Justice Jackson’s general framework for assessing the validity of an executive order is useful and often used. Category 1: “When the president acts pursuant to an express or implied authorization of Congress, his authority is at its maximum, for it includes all that he possesses in his own right plus all that Congress can delegate. . . . If his act is held unconstitutional under these circumstances, it usually means that the federal government as an
undivided whole lacks power.” Category 2: “When the president acts in absence of either a congressional grant or denial of authority, he can only rely upon his own independent powers, but there is a zone of twilight in which he and Congress may have concurrent authority, or in which its distribution is uncertain.” Under these circumstances, a president’s actions can derive support from “congressional inertia, indifference or quiescence.” Category 3: “When the president takes measures incompatible with the expressed or implied will of Congress, his power is at its lowest ebb, for then he can rely only upon his own constitutional powers minus any constitutional powers of Congress over the matter.” Courts have continued to struggle in identifying the precise scope of presidential powers. As the court confessed in Dames & Moore, each challenge to an executive order is “only one more episode in the never-ending tension between the president exercising the executive authority in a world that presents each day some new challenge with which he must deal and the Constitution under which we all live and which no one disputes embodies some sort of system of checks and balances.” Or, as Justice Jackson put it: “A judge . . . may be surprised at the poverty of really useful and unambiguous authority applicable to concrete problems of executive power as they actually present themselves.” In summary, the debate over presidential executive orders will not end with the election of a new president given our history. Many such orders end up on the docket of the federal courts, which have to apply legal principles that are not always crystal clear. This is just another example of the checks and balances of our three branches of government which have served our democracy well. Submitted by Judge Steve Halsey, Wright County District Court, chambered in Buffalo.
... the debate over presidential executive orders will not end with the election of a new president given our history
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (CONTINUED)
The First Amendment 45 words, five freedoms Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
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the vernacular when the FBI targeted gangsters as Public Enemy Number 1. History repeats itself as other U.S. presidents, Republican and Democrat, have despised the free press. In a healthy democracy, the public has the right to choose or reject political leaders in free elections, and the media has the right to report and comment on those elections and the decisions made by the victor of free election. In the Star Tribune article, Trump claims Obama tapped his phones, “he likened the supposed tapping to “Nixon/Watergate” and “McCarthyism.” Then on Page A8 of the article: A history lesson on Trump and Roy Cohn. “Cohn was the brains behind McCarthy’s rise to power…” Is this coincidental? To me it is there is a need for the media to be nemesis, and assure the safety of our democracy. From Jefferson on Politics and Government: Freedom of the Press: “A press that is free
to investigate and criticize the government is absolutely essential in a nation that practices self- government and is therefore dependent on an educated and enlightened citizenry. On the other hand, newspapers too often take advantage of their freedom and publish lies and scurrilous gossip that could only deceive and mislead the people. Jefferson himself suffered greatly under the latter kind of press during his presidency. But he was a great believer in the ultimate triumph of truth in the free marketplace of ideas, and looked to that for his final vindication.” Jefferson to John Jay, 1786: “Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press nor that be limited without danger of losing it.” Thomas Jefferson quote: “When the people fear the government, that’s tyranny; when the government fears the people, that’s freedom.”
Don Uhlhorn Mora