If you are anything like me (And for your sake, I hope you are not), you are bothered by Executive Orders. It seems like we hear more and more about our Presidents acting unilaterally to make policy and promulgate laws by way of Executive Orders.   

What most people don’t know is that there is NO express authority in the U.S. Constitution that allows our Presidents to issue these edicts.  It is important to understand that Presidential Orders lack express Constitutional or statutory authority; they are actually nothing more than words on a page. 

All of us are bothered when the politician we didn’t vote for is elected, then uses his Presidential pen to circumvent the only legal lawmaking body of the United States; Congress.   But when our candidate is in office, for some reason we don’t seem to mind so much.    But the fact is that we should be bothered every time any President uses his executive pen to author Presidential directives and assume power he does not legally have.

Executive Orders have been used since Washington was President.  They weren’t always called E.O.s, and they weren’t always so official.  In the beginning they were very informal and normally not controversial.  It wasn’t until 1907 that Executive Orders were even officially numbered.  As of today, the official number of E.O.s stands in excess of 14,000, but since they were not originally numbered, and some have been lost to history, the actual number is unknown.  The first 24 President issued about 1,300 orders.  The last 23 Presidents, including Mr. Biden, have issued almost ten times that many; approximately 13,000.    

This has been an accretionary process, but all of us should view Executive Orders as a threat to the very foundation of our Government.  If the Founding Fathers had wanted an omnipotent leader on a throne, they would not have setup our nation as a Constitutional Federal Republic. This kind of arbitrary, unilateral power was never intended by the Founding Fathers to be conveyed unto Presidents.

Our system of government is divided into three branches, Executive, Legislative and Judicial, specifically to deny any one of the tripartite branches having unilateral power to make public policy or make laws.  The President’s power is statutorily limited by the Constitution to his authority to recommend legislation and to veto any which he does not support.  No President has the power to make law.

Bill Clinton issued 254 E.O.s in 8 years.  George Bush’s total was 291 in 8 years.  Barack Obama authored 276 in 8 years.   Donald Trump wrote 220 during his 4 years in office.  Joe Biden has signed more than 50 in just 3 months, almost half of which were direct reversals of President Trump’s.   

The good news is these modern Presidents pale in comparison to some who came before.   Consider the following:   Harry S. Truman issued 907 executive orders, Theodore Roosevelt, 1,081 orders, Calvin Coolidge, 1,203 orders and 1,803 orders for Woodrow Wilson.   Franklin D. Roosevelt holds the record, with 3,522 E.O.s, but he was elected to four terms in office and served from 1933 to 1945.   He died less than three months into his fourth term.

Ultimately, and inarguably, the President exceeds his constitutional authority when he uses Executive Orders to set policy and make laws, a responsibility that the Constitution expressly granted to Congress.   The President’s powers were deliberately limited by the Founding Fathers, but somehow the system has steadily grown, with Congress ceding its lawmaking authority with barely a whimper. 

The American people and Congress should act to enforce the limitations put on those who are elected President.  If nothing else, all Executive Orders should be time-limited, so that they would expire unless fully adopted and officially endorsed by Congress.  

If Executive Orders are allowed to continue unchecked, we run the danger of operating a continuous political seesaw. Just as President Biden’s first acts in office were to undo by Executive Order decrees put in place by President Trump, there is nothing to prevent the next President from doing the same thing to Biden. Most certainly, if Mr. Trump were re-elected, he would simply re-institute his former orders. We Americans are caught in the middle; mere spectators watching a never ending slow-motion autocratic tennis game with four years between volleys.

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution specifically gave Congress alone the power to declare war and raise and support the armed forces, yet we are still engaged in an “unofficial” war in Afghanistan.  Afghanistan is the longest war in American history, outlasting the Civil War, Spanish‐​American War, World War I, World War II, and Korean War combined.  What’s worse is that nothing has been accomplished, and each incoming President is afraid to admit that thousands of American lives and billions of dollars were wasted for nothing, by ending the debacle and withdrawing our troops.

The last time Congress approved a formal declaration of war was during WWII.   Congress did pass the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists on September 18, 2001 in response to the 9/11 attacks, in what was intended to be a short term engagement. To date, more than 2,300 American service members have been killed, and over 20,000 wounded in the unofficial war in Afghanistan.    Perhaps they’re only unofficially dead or wounded. 

Just as in Hans Christians Anderson’s children’s story, the Emperor’s New Clothes, it’s time to tell our Presidents that they’re actually naked.   As long as we are silent in regard to Executive Orders, the Emperor is going to parade around town in his imaginary clothing, while all of us ooh and aww at the spectacle. The problem is that too many American service men and women have been wounded or killed watching the parade.

Why do Presidents use Executive Orders if there’ s no express authority to do so? You might as well ask why a dog licks his testicles. Because he can.