Executive orders come at an expensive price

Few today understand that America is actually not a democracy but, instead, a constitutional republic, based on the idea of representative democracy at its inception. The system our founders established truly is the best of both worlds – a perfect compromise between a direct democracy and a political dictatorship.

Our country’s founders wanted to avoid the results of a majority winning in every instance throughout history. Often, the majority of a population agrees upon a particular set of beliefs.This doesn’t necessarily mean this particular set of beliefs is the smartest or most accurately necessary, by any means. In fact, it’s often the actions and beliefs of the noble few that catalyze the prevailing of logic. History has proven this time and again.

Further, our founders’ deepest, most personally relatable fear at the time of our new government’s formation was an eventual regression toward a dictatorship. From our Founding Fathers’ perspectives, the wrath of a tyrant was epitomized in the form of King George.

This was to be avoided at all costs with the creation of a new nation and its rules for government.The concept of a separation of powers dictates that the legislative branch makes the laws of this country, the executive branch implements these laws and the judicial branch oversees them.

Within the first few days of his presidency, however, Donald Trump has been making laws at record pace. In fact, President Trump is on pace to issue more executive orders than nearly every U.S. president before him.But is such action constitutional?

Executive orders derive from Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, more colloquially known as the “Necessary and Proper” clause. According to the Tenth Amendment Center, a national think tank that advocates for the study and exploration of state and individual sovereignty issues, “It has been a precedent for a president to issue executive orders that he deems to be necessary and proper.”

It’s reserved within the role of the Supreme Court to decide whether or not an executive action is constitutional. Further, this decision is based not on the amount of executive action, but on the type of action taken. In other words, it would matter more what specifically targeted issuance is ordered than how many different issuances were ordered.

President Obama issued a considerable amount of executive orders during his presidency, but the powers of the executive have been consistently expanding since Washington, most evidently during FDR’s administration.

Obama was definitely no exception to executive action, but neither is Trump.Over the past few weeks, I have personally witnessed many advocates of Trump’s presidency laud the president’s various decreed executive actions and call out former Obama advocates as hypocrites for dissenting. All the while, the powers of the executive, a single individual in an office, are being expanded exponentially.

The fact of the matter is, executive orders, no matter what ideological direction, come with the expensive price of established precedent. Hypocrisy, in this instance, is a two-way street.It can be argued that many of President Trump’s executive actions are necessary, and proper – as was the case for many of President Obama’s – but at what cost? The loss of our system of separation of powers and a devolution of our republic toward a dictatorship, that’s what.

I just hope for our system of checks and balances to swoop in and salvage the accumulation of damage that has been done to our foundationally established separation of powers. For the sake of our great republic, I desperately hope it so.

Chancellor is a member of College Republicans.