Dems See the Endless Possibilities of the ‘Illegal but Good’ Agenda By David Harsanyi
“With eviction victory in hand,” a Washington Post headline informs us, “congressional Democrats turn attention to student loans”:
A torrent of Congressional Democrats is calling on the White House to extend a soon-expiring pause on federal student loan payments, emboldened by their success in pressuring the Biden administration to approve a new eviction moratorium.
It wasn’t “congressional Democrats” who procured this “victory.” It was a “torrent” of activists who happen to be in Congress who were successful. As Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez noted yesterday, they took “direct action” and pressured the president of the United States to nullify property rights while ignoring Congress and SCOTUS. Congress did nothing but abdicate its responsibilities.
It’s true that Democrats celebrating this week’s eviction moratorium see the delegitimizing of courts and circumvention of Congress as a “victory.” Why wouldn’t they expect their agenda to be unilaterally implemented via the executive branch? What limiting principle stops Biden from ripping up student-loan agreements? Or mortgages, for that matter? What limiting principle stops the CDC from dropping a national vaccine mandate — with penalties, including jail time — or instituting national vaccine passports? It might be illegal, but if it saves lives, right? And why only the CDC? Why not other federal agencies? Democrats will, of course, whine when President Ron DeSantis or Donald Trump 2.0 governs via similar diktats. But Democrats will have set the precedent: If the president deems his actions “good,” it’s kosher now.
Almost every administration lawyer advised Biden that extending the eviction moratorium would be unconstitutional. But progressives objected. So, according to the Post, the president tasked Chief of Staff Ron Klain to seek out hyperpartisan scholar Laurence Tribe, who Biden knew would tell him what he wanted to hear. Tribe instructed Biden to simply write a new moratorium. Presto. Using the standard now embraced by most liberal pundits, Biden is free to issue a slew of new orders for the next three years if he feels like it. And there is nothing standing in the way of his issuing a moratorium on student-loan payments, as well.
Biden has always been one of the most pusillanimous figures in Washington — pulled to wherever the center of gravity is in Democratic politics. Right now, he seems to believe that Cori Bush represents that center for some reason. Time will tell if he’s right.
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