Skip to footer

Has Obama abused executive power? His 5 most controversial uses.

Faced with a balky Congress that is unwilling to move his agenda or compromise on most matters, President Obama says he has no choice but to use executive power. House Speaker John Boehner plans to sue. Here are our picks for Mr. Obama’s most controversial uses of executive power:

2. The Affordable Care Act – Federal Subsidies

Another controversial element of the ACA is the provision that says only people who enrolled in coverage via their state exchange are eligible for federal subsidies. After the law passed, the Internal Revenue Service enacted a rule allowing the subsidies for people who enrolled via the federal exchange, Healthcare.gov. Opponents of the law sued and won in one federal circuit court of appeals and lost in another.

Defenders of the ACA say the wording of the law was a typo.

If the case goes to the Supreme Court, it “would test the authority of a federal agency to interpret US law when the statute as written by Congress is considered ambiguous by the executive branch,” writes the Monitor’s Warren Richey.

If the Supreme Court sides with the law’s opponents, the ruling would deprive millions of people in 36 states from receiving federal subsidies to buy health insurance, gutting a central element of the ACA.

2 of 5
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.