NY Times editorial board knocks Biden's use of executive actions

Yes, The New York Times.................and no. I don't change titles.

This is such utter bull dung...I guess it was okay for the orange conman to override Obama's executive orders with his own, to erase his legacy.  Tough shit

Elections have consequences.  Deal with it

I have to agree with Lady. But I will say, that I think we need to stop legislating with EO's. It's because of this reason. They have no staying power and we bounce from administration to administration with payback changes. No way to operate a country.

I have to agree with Lady. But I will say, that I think we need to stop legislating with EO's.

I would tend to agree, but not necessarily in most of these cases. 

Many of Biden's EO's concern COVID, if he were to go through the normal steps, Republicans would slow or even stop the efforts.  With thousands of people dying daily from COVID, EO's go immediately into effect instead of dragging out weeks or months through the House and Senate.

They have no staying power and we bounce from administration to administration with payback changes.

But they cause immediate action, which is needed after 4 years of corrupt or non actions.

(i.e. we have hundreds, if not thousands of children living in cages through no fault of their own.  Could you justify telling them to stay in those cages, on the floor with limited access to medical aid during a pandemic, for months more?)

I think we need to stop legislating with EO's

I agree, though one of the most efficient ways to reverse objectionable former Presidents EO's is to use another EO. Few on the right were complaining when Trump was signing dozens of EO's to reverse Obama's, yet now they're howling in rage when Biden does the same to reverse dishonest Donald's dumpster of stinky fish. Executive orders are really just statements detailing how the government will view certain laws and restrictions. I agree that we should be putting good responsible EO's into law through congress, though with the way congress and the Senate have worked for the past decade getting anything done without mountains of pork from both sides is almost impossible. EO's at this point are the lesser of two evils and are changeable with each administration so they do less long term harm.

Must have been a slow day at the editorial board office. 

It is the NYslimes...nuff said.

Did you just diss the Holy Grail of the left for the last five years? Wow.

Mr Trump issued 220 EO's

45 Memorandums

and 59 other notices or memorandums over his 4  years

When Mr Biden approaches those numbers, I will start to worry.

What I am more annoyed over and concerned about is that this Cabinet should have been in place 4 weeks ago

if not earlier and working on a smoother transition

instead of COVID EO after COVID related EO because the nominees are not yet confirmed by the Senate.

Ya know, if ya compared apples with apples, you'd actually be a bit more concerned.

220 EO's for 4 years vs 30 EO's in two weeks. 

Based on your criteria, at the rate Biden is going - 30 EO's in two weeks - 52 weeks x 15 = 780 EO's x 4 years = 3,120 EO's - that's apples to apples.

Now... that's only assuming that he writes an average of 15 EOs per week for 52 weeks. Is that even possible? That would be the only thing he did his entire time in the WH if that were the case.

Actually just showing the hypocrisy of his example - two weeks versus 4 years - wasn't even a good apple vs oranges thingy

I know. I just figured I'd point out how preposterous 15 EOs per week really is before someone else did.  

So when you come home from work and the house and yard is on fire, do you just try to save one or two rooms?

And lets be honest, not all are EO's as was discussed on another seed, Executive Actions aren't really enforceable.

14 dealt with COVID and rejoining UN WHO.

3 memorandums, 2 proclamations.

Accepted invitation to rejoin Paris accord

I counted 28 plus the 5 other actions.

Especially liked the last two

Executive Order on Revocation of Certain Executive Orders Concerning Federal Regulation : Revokes six "harmful policies and directives" issued during the Trump administration to provide federal agencies more flexibility in using regulatory action to address "urgent challenges" such as the COVID-19 pandemic and economic recovery
Issued: Jan. 20
Read the order here

Executive Order on Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel : Requires every executive agency appointee to sign an "ethics pledge," which includes bans on gifts from lobbyists and "golden parachute" payments
Issued: Jan. 20
Read the order here

abcnews.go

There's really nothing surprising in any of them

Here's the NYT text:

Ease Up on the Executive Actions, Joe
President Biden is right to not let his agenda be held hostage, but legislating through Congress is a better path

President Biden is moving aggressively to turn the page on the Trump era.

A week into his presidency, Mr. Biden has issued a   raft of executive orders   and other actions. Already, he has committed to rejoining the Paris climate change agreement,   ended the Muslim travel ban , canceled the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, rescinded funding for and halted construction on the wall at the southern border, reaffirmed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, mandated mask-wearing on federal grounds, moved to end the federal government’s reliance on private prisons, reversed the ban on transgender military service and called for agency assessments aimed at advancing racial equity — just to name a few. The coming days will bring more such action.

These moves are being met with cheers by Democrats and others eager to see the legacy of Donald Trump’s presidency dismantled posthaste. Republicans, meanwhile, are   grumbling   about presidential overreach and accusing Mr. Biden of betraying his pledge to seek unity.

In other words, things are going the same way they   often do   in Washington. “There’s a sort of tribalism when it comes to the use of executive orders,” observes John Hudak, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. “When your party’s in the White House, it’s the greatest thing on earth. When your party’s out, it’s undemocratic. It’s basically Satan’s pen.”

But this is no way to make law. A polarized, narrowly divided Congress may offer Mr. Biden little choice but to employ executive actions or see his entire agenda held hostage. These directives, however, are a flawed substitute for legislation. They are intended to provide guidance to the government and need to work within the discretion granted the executive by existing law or the Constitution. They do not create new law — though executive orders carry the force of law — and they are not meant to serve as an end run around the will of Congress. By design, such actions are more limited in what they can achieve than legislation, and presidents who overreach invite intervention by the courts.

But legal limitations are not the only — or even perhaps the biggest — point of concern. Executive actions are far more ephemeral and easily discarded than legislation, which can set up a whipsaw effect, as each president scrambles to undo the work of his predecessor. Just as Mr. Trump set about reversing as many of President Barack Obama’s directives as possible, Mr. Biden is now working to reverse many of Mr. Trump’s reversals. With executive orders, there is always another presidential election just a few years off, threatening to upend everything.

This creates instability and uncertainty that can carry significant   economic   as well as human costs. Just consider how the Dreamers, immigrants illegally brought to the United States as minors, have had their lives disrupted in recent years. Mr. Obama established   DACA   to protect them from deportation. Upon taking office, Mr. Trump moved to end the program, setting off years of legal challenges and throwing these people’s lives into a nightmarish limbo. Mr. Biden now has moved to reaffirm the protections. The fragility of the Dreamers’ status has been laid bare. Presidents have wide latitude, both constitutionally and statutorily, to set immigration policy. But Dreamers deserve better than to be subject to the whims of whoever holds the White House. It is long past time for Congress to establish a clearer, more permanent path for them.

Executive actions can signal priorities — for instance, Mr. Biden’s push to promote racial equity or tackle climate change. Mr. Trump was good at the theatrical part of this, if not so much at providing actual guidance. His directives tended to be vague and sloppy — “bumper stickers rather than pamphlets,” as Mr. Hudak put it.

Undoing some of Mr. Trump’s excesses is necessary, but Mr. Biden’s legacy will depend on his ability to hammer out agreements with Congress. On the campaign trail, he often touted his skill at finding compromise, and his decades as a legislator, as reasons to elect him over Mr. Trump. The country faces significant challenges to recovering from the pandemic, from a global recession, from years of safety nets and institutions and trust being eroded. Now it is time for the new president to show the American people what permanent change for a better nation can look like.

Here's John Scalzi's take:

The   New York Times   editorial board thinks Biden is making too many executive orders:  
Which   a)   is bullshit,   b)   shows that the   New York Times   editorial board has the luxury of not living in the real world. I don't mean this as a generalized diss on the   New York Times   or its editorial board; I'm a former journalist and I'm usually more than willing to give editorial writers (and the newspapers they work for) the benefit of the doubt. The gig is literally to make hot takes. But the reason this hot take is bullshit is that the majority of Biden's EOs are reversing the terrible EOs of Trump, and the ones that are not are generally understood to be an immediate action that will hopefully be followed by congressional action; i.e., Biden offering an EO doesn't preclude congressional action later.

Those latter type of EOs also tend to be ones that benefit the poor, working class and marginalized folks. The   NYTimes   editorial board is more diverse than it used to be, but ain't none of them broke at the moment. Basically, the editorial board was making a busy work editorial,   and it was foolish .