Executive Orders

I listened with interest to President Joe Biden’s remarks yesterday on signing his executive orders regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and it moved me to write some general observations about executive orders. I am one of those rare creatures who care both about policy and process. I believe in republican government and am wary of democracy, at least in the debased form in which the word is used these days. If you want more democratic government, why not direct democracy? Somehow I see no advocates of more democratic government arguing for direct democracy.

In general I think that executive orders should be avoided and are basically a sign of Congressional non-feasance. If you want more or different things to happen, start electing different Congressional representatives.

• Presidents’ powers are actually pretty limited. Attention should be paid to the relevant empowering statutes. Most of them are probably unconstitutional but that’s another subject.
• I think a president should have pretty much unlimited power to reverse a previous president’s executive orders. Yes, I think that the courts decided wrongly in the cases brought before them during Trump’s term of office on that very subject.
• You cannot coherently decry authoritarian government and praise executive orders. They are what authoritarian rule looks like.
• I believe the president has the authority to direct all executive departments to pay a minimum wage of $15/hour (or any other figure) for federal employees and contractors but does not have the authority to appropriate the money to pay it. I would also reject suits for payment of money never appropriated on grounds of sovereign immunity but that’s another subject.
• I don’t think the president has the authority to mandate a national $15 minimum wage full stop. An executive order to that effect would be an impeachable offense.
• An executive order not to enforce our immigration laws would be an impeachable offense.
• Absent a declaration of emergency and martial law, I don’t believe that presidents have the authority to mandate the wearing of facemasks. I don’t believe the Congress has the authority to mandate such a thing, either. Could the president mandate that on federal lands? It depends somewhat on the empowering legislation but I doubt it. I think that people would be fully entitled to ignore such a mandate.

I’m not opposed to wearing facemasks and I think those who reject it are being foolish, reckless, and irresponsible. But there’s a difference between something being recommended and an enforced mandate.

I was caught aback by President Biden’s claim that rigorous wearing of facemasks would save 50,000 lives over the next 100 days. One of the great handicaps of a pledge to truth and science is that you should tell the truth and apply actual science. Over the last year approximately 1,000 people have died of COVID-19 (or, at least, died in the presence of a diagnosis of COVID-19) per day. Unless there is an associated claim of an enormous upswing in deaths over the next 100 days, that amounts to the claim that a marginal increase in the wearing of facemasks would result in a 50% decrease in the number of deaths. Is there actual evidence that such a marginal increase would have that effect? There’s data contrasting wearing facemasks with not wearing facemasks, particularly in health care settings, but is there actual data supporting the claim that a 10% or 25% increase in wearing facemasks would result in a 50% decrease? Maybe things are different in other places but hereabouts wearing facemasks in stores and so on is practically universal. The only place left is in the home. Anyone who believes that the mandate would extend into the home is living in a fantasy world.