WASHINGTON – For some White House allies, the long list of executive actions President Barack Obama announced in his State of the Union address was marred by a few glaring omissions.
Gay-rights advocates are seething over Obama’s refusal to grant employment discrimination protections to gays and lesbians working for federal contractors, safeguards they have been seeking for years. And some immigration overhaul supporters were disappointed that he did not act on his own to halt deportations, which have soared during his presidency and angered many Hispanics.
On both issues, White House officials say the place for action is in Congress, where successful legislation would be far more sweeping than the steps the president could take by himself. But work on an employment non-discrimination bill and an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws is stalled on Capitol Hill, leaving advocates perplexed as to why their calls for executive action did not fit into Obama’s vow to act “whenever and wherever” Congress will not.
“In the absence of congressional action, an executive order that prohibits discrimination by contractors is a tailor-made solution to the president’s expressed aims,” said Fred Sainz, vice president of Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay-advocacy organization. Sainz said his frustration with the White House’s inaction on the issue was “growing by the day.”
Ben Monterroso, executive director of the immigration organization Mi Familia Vota, said: “The president said he is going to use executive orders to act where Congress fails, and we expect him to do the same with immigration reform.”
The criticism is particularly striking given that it is coming from two constituencies that have reliably supported the president. More than 70 percent of Hispanic voters backed Obama in the 2012 presidential election, and the gay community has consistently praised him for his unprecedented support.
For gay advocates, the frustration that followed the State of the Union was compounded by the fact that the president announced a minimum-wage executive order that in many ways mirrored the action they are seeking. The order raises the minimum hourly pay for new federal contractors from $7.25 to $10.10. Obama cast the move as an opportunity to make at least some progress on the issue while he pushes Congress to pass legislation extending the minimum to all workers.
Gay-rights proponents have asked Obama to sign an executive order prohibiting discrimination by federal contractors on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. At the same time, they want Congress to pass the broader Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which has the backing of the White House. That measure passed the Senate last year but is stalled in the Republican-led House.
Heather Cronk, co-director of the organizations GetEqual, said Obama’s declining to sign the executive order means he is “actively choosing to permit discrimination against LGBT workers.”
Obama spokesman Jay Carney said the executive actions the president outlined in Tuesday night’s address were not an exhaustive list of his plans for this year. But Carney also cautioned that he was not implying there would be any future action on the LGBT order.
While leading gay-rights supporters were largely united in their reactions following the State of the Union, the view among immigration advocates was more fractured.
Some of those seeking an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws fear that unilateral action by the president would upend the fragile legislative maneuvering on Capitol Hill. A Senate-approved bill is languishing in the House, but GOP leaders are working on another set of immigration principles to secure the national border and extend legal status to many of the estimated 11 million people already in the U.S. illegally.
But other immigration backers say there is more that Obama can – and should – do immediately, regardless of what’s happening on Capitol Hill. Their demands center in particular on deportations, which has hit about 400,000 annually during Obama’s presidency, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
In 2012, Obama suspended deportations of some of the “Dreamers” – immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children. Advocates, as well as some Democratic lawmakers, want the president to expand that order to cover those children’s parents and other immigrant groups.
Lorella Praeli, advocacy and policy director for the group United We Dream, welcomed Obama’s renewed call in the State of the Union for passing comprehensive legislation, but she still singled out the president’s resistance to take executive action to end more deportations.
“While he’s willing to take action singlehandedly on other political issues, he so far refuses to stop deporting people who would be granted legal status and a chance for citizenship under legislation he champions,” Praeli said in a statement.
The White House argues that not only would such unilateral action destabilize the debate on Capitol Hill but it also could be difficult to legally defend.
5 Things to know about executive orders
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama has a new go-it-alone strategy: When Congress blocks his way, the president says he plans to act on his own more often. (He’s already done it quite a bit.) Five things to know about executive orders and other presidential edicts:
1. Every president does it. The strategy goes all the way back to George Washington, who issued 8 executive orders, although that precise term wasn’t in use then. Some big examples of unilateral executive action: Thomas Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase. Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Harry Truman desegregating the armed forces. George W. Bush establishing military tribunals to try “unlawful enemy combatants.” Obama giving young people brought to this country illegally a reprieve from deportation.
2. The other party hates it – until it’s their turn. Members of the opposing party can be expected to criticize presidents who make an end run around Congress. They especially squawk about so-called midnight regulations that a president issues just before turning the White House over to someone of the opposing party. But once the tables are turned, the next president is apt to do the same thing. And the party that’s now on the outside is sure to complain about an abuse of power.
3. Not all executive orders are “executive orders.” It’s complicated. There are executive orders, proclamations, directives, memos and all sorts of other ways for presidents to get their way – within the limits of the Constitution and federal law. Proclamations, for example, have the same force of law as executive orders. The difference? Executive orders are aimed at those within government; proclamations at those outside government. Examples: Obama’s move to raise the minimum wage for new federal contractors will be an executive order. His deferred deportation program came out as a policy memo from his Homeland Security secretary. Bill Clinton’s last-minute move to protect more than a million acres of land by creating new national monuments came as a series of proclamations. Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon with a proclamation. Jimmy Carter pardoned Vietnam draft evaders with a proclamation.
4. Executive actions aren’t set in stone – or foolproof. Future presidents can reverse their predecessors with the stroke of a pen. The so-called “global gag rule,” which denies U.S. dollars to any international family planning group that provides abortion-related services or information, has gone back and forth like a ping-pong ball. It was imposed by Ronald Reagan, rescinded by Clinton, re-instituted by Bush, yanked again by Obama.
Sometimes, though, presidential actions are harder to reverse. In Clinton’s final days in office, his administration set tighter standards for the amount of arsenic allowed in drinking water. Bush suspended the rules for a while, but ultimately let them go through after facing a public outcry.
Some executive actions just don’t pan out. In his first week in office, Obama signed an executive order to close the prison at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba.
Not so fast, Mr. President: Congress has used its budgeting power to block Guantanamo detainees from being moved to the United States ever since.
5. Obama’s use of executive power isn’t out of the ordinary. Executive actions are hard to quantify, since they take so many forms. Further, numbers don’t tell the whole story since one action might celebrate a birthday and another declare slaves to be free. As for executive actions overall, Obama “has used them a lot, but his use of them is not at all unusual or exceptional,” says Kenneth Mayer, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who’s written a book on the executive orders. Obama has issued about 34 formal executive orders per year; compared to about 36 per year for Bush, 46 for Clinton and 48 for Ronald Reagan, according to The American Presidency Project at the University of California-Santa Barbara.
