Clarifying 74-year-old President Donald Trump’s use of the executive order, 71-year-old chief trade adviser Peter Navarro said it derives from the Constitution’s Divine Right of Kings, an appendage of the Founding Fathers from the days of King George, the British monarchy where the monarch has absolute authority. “The Lord and the Founding Fathers created executive orders because of the partisan bickering and divided government. That what we have here,” Navarro said on NBC’s “Meet The Press.” Trump was especially critic of former President Barack Obama[s use of executive orders especially when it came to granting citizenship to children of undocumented workers even when they weren’t born in United States. Trump’s executive order extending extra $400 a week unemployment compensation to the nation’s 30 million unemployed workers.
Trump and House Democrats led by 80-year-old Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) can’t agree on a new stimulus bill, something Democrats want a much larger package totalling $3.4 trillion, something opposed by Trump and Republicans. “Question for Navarro: Was that in the Old Testament or the New Testament? Or perhaps the Koran?” tweeted 78-year-old Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Tribe. Tribe’s disdain for Trump and his White House is no secret. Whether executive orders stem from the “Divine Right” or simply evolved over the years as part of the chief executive’s Article II authority is unimportant. What’s significant is that presidents have found that if every ecision were based on an act of Congress, very little would get gone. Navarro was tongue-in-cheek when he said the executive privilege stemmed from the president’s “Divine Right.”
Faced with an impasse in Congress over a new stimulus bill, Trump decided through executive orders he’d try to provide some relief to unemployed workers suffering under Covid-19 lockdowns that sent the U.S. economy spiraling down from an unemployment rate of 3.5% to over 11%, in the greatest contraction of jobs since the Great Depression. Trump had enough of bickering with Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) who are looking for a repeat of the March 31 CARES Act, spending some $3.2 trillion to jumpstart the economy. By comparison, the Brussels-base European Union has debated a $750 billion stimulus package or about 25% of what’s proposed by Pelosi and Schumer. Both want Washington to bailout cities, counties and states strapped for cash during months of government lockdown, preventing U.S. citizens from returning to work.
Congressional Research Services [CRS] found in 2014 that executive orders evolved from presidential history. “Such order are accepted as an inherent aspect of presidential power,” something the Supreme Court recognizes as part of presidents’ Article II authority. Supreme Court places limits on executive orders, especially if they deviate from ordinary Article II decision-making. “Despite the amorphous nature of the authority to issue executive orders, presidential memoranda, and proclamations, these instruments have been employed by every President since the inception of the Republic,” wrote CRS. Navarro antagonized NBC’s Chuck Todd on saying that House Democrats didn’t want to make a deal to let economy continue to deteriorate to hurt Trump’s chances of reelection. Navarro worries that adding too much to the national debt could hurt long-term economic recovery.
Navarro thinks Democrats should meet Republicans halfway, not demand a stimulus bill included subsidies for the cannabis industry or Planned Parenthood. “We’ve got two sides, you know, one’s at $1 trillion and another’s at $3 trillion. The first thing you have to do is agree on some number in between. Once you do that, step two is figured out within that what you both agree on,” Navarro said. When House Democrats passed the $3.4 trillion HEROES Act May 31, they couldn’t possibly think the White House would agree to it. Navarro complained that Democrats should expect Republicans to subsidize marijuana farms or abortions. “If that’s the standard, we’ve not only accepted it, we’ve offered it,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), saying Democrats have already come down to $2 trillion. Signing his executive order was Trump’s way of getting Democrats back to the table.
Trump’s executive order was designed to get Democrats back to the table to fashion a mutually acceptable stimulus bill that recognizes that adding too much to the national debt could hurt long-term economic recovery. Democrats think that the bigger the stimulus package the more it will help the economy. With the dollar losing value against other major currencies, global currency markets are watching carefully to see how much debt the government is willing to take on. Trump wants stimulus but he doesn’t want to harm economic recovery by burying the country in unnecessary debt, forcing the Federal Reserve Board to keep interest rates at zero for the foreseeable future. Trump and Navarro know Democrats campaign strategy heading into the November election. Make Trump look as bad as possible managing the Covid-19 crisis and the U.S. economy.of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
