Executive Action?

On Thursday night, President Obama gave a speech about his plan for immigration reform. His plan? To allow immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for 5 years or more, have children who are citizens of the U.S., have no criminal record, and are willing to pay taxes.  In his speech he said,

“What I’m describing is accountability-a commonsense, middle ground approach: If you meet the criteria, you can come out of the shadows and get right with the law. If you’re a criminal, you’ll be deported.”

We can all agree, our borders need to be secured, but this plan in particular isn’t well liked by Congress. In fact, President Obama is planning on using Executive Action to get his bill passed. Congressional Republicans are already making plans to stop Obama from using this Executive Action as they see it as a gross misuse of power. They also aren’t too happy about his executive changes to the Affordable Care Act otherwise known as Obamacare.

I have a hard time with this idea of Executive  Action. It seems the President uses this action when he disagrees with Congress or finds the system too slow. This shines a spotlight on the dysfunctional relationship between Congress and the President.

A senior policy analyst, Elizabeth Slattery had a very interesting point when she said, that President Obama once made a comment that President Bush was trying to bring more power into the executive branch and limit Congress, he promised to bring change…I have to agree with Ms. Slattery, I’m not seeing much change.  I appreciate the media’s coverage on this topic. I have seen equal coverage from both sides on this issue, not only about immigration reform but also on Executive Action. From this class, I have learned much about the relationship the government and the media hold, their constant influence on one another and the real power the media has in shaping opinion and ideas. It will be interesting to see how coverage will progress on this issue.