In Federalist No. 51, James Madison wrote on the necessity of separated powers: "The accumulation of powers legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands ... may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

October 8, 2015

President Obama's Climate Change Power Grab

By Rachel Bovard

It's almost winter in Paris, and soon the City of Lights will be blanketed beneath a heavy layer of foreign bureaucrats and climate-change negotiators. On November 30, hundreds of unelected representatives of the international powers will descend under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

According to recent press reports, the mission of the U.S. delegation will be to bind its government to multi-billion-dollar climate regulations — regulations the administration has no intention of sending to Congress for approval.

This is no trifling issue of executive-legislative disagreement. Rather, it's the latest salvo from an executive intent on centralizing power in the White House.

When Congress refuses to enact policies he desires, President Obama takes "executive action," putting those policies in place unilaterally. This continued executive overreach — and Congress's failure to respond to it — is a grave threat to the fundamental nature of the separation of powers that guides our government.

In Federalist No. 51, James Madison wrote on the necessity of separated powers: "The accumulation of powers legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands ... may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." His solution was to endow the three branches of government with co-equal power, thus ensuring that "ambition counteracts ambition." That is, each branch would jealously guard its power from being usurped by the others, thereby keeping the three branches distinct and America free from tyranny.

Under this president, the slow accumulation of power in the executive branch has gone unchecked by a bumbling and ineffective Congress. That once-powerful body has raised nary a whisper over the steady dilution of its authorities.

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