VP Harris’s penchant for using unlawful administrative power and bypassing Congress threatens democracy and self-government.
Much wind went out of the “threat to democracy” criticism of Donald Trump when Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden at the top of the Democrat ticket for President without a single primary vote being cast in her favor. However valid, such criticism of her coronation as a candidate misses a far more central reason why Harris poses the real threat to democracy in the presidential race. Her administration has turned loose the undemocratic Administrative State to wreak havoc on the American people in an unprecedented fashion.
The Administrative State is a catch-all name for that alphabet soup of federal agencies that exert regulatory control over people’s lives, homes, and careers. The Biden-Harris penchant for invoking administrative power, from its first hundred days of executive orders opening the border to its latest unlawful salvo aimed at winning votes from student loan debtors, seeks to legislate without involving the people’s elected representatives in Congress.The Border, Student Loan Debt, and Title IX
Numerous executive orders were used to loosen effective control of the southern border. Without Congress approving these policy changes, construction ended on the border wall, the remain-in-Mexico policy ceased, immigrants were flown around the country and deposited in unsuspecting local communities, and the CBP One app facilitated tens of thousands of appointments for still more immigrants to arrive outside normal channels. Whether or not Harris was the border czar, she owns the administration’s decision to create a porous border via executive action. This threatens democracy.
Another prominent example is the unlawful administrative cancellation of hundreds of millions in student loan debt. Money owed to the Treasury is not something the executive has plenary power to cancel (nor to transfer to taxpayers as debt), but rather than go to Congress, the Biden-Harris Administration has tried to re-interpret old statutes to have a meaning they cannot possibly contain. Even when the Supreme Court shot down that gambit, the administration cynically persisted. Trying to cancel debt faster than courts could stop them, or faster than litigants with standing could be found to oppose them, the administration has tried to force a policy outcome that has never—and could never—amass majority support in Congress. This threatens democracy.
A third area where Harris & Co. have ignored Congress is in forcing school districts to interpret Title IX in a novel way that would require allowing biological men into women’s locker rooms and other private spaces and onto women’s sports teams.
