Editors Note: this blogpost was supposed to be published in November of 2014, but got caught up in draft status. Now, 8 years to the day later and following another round of midterm elections where Democrats need to wrap things up before they lose the House of Representatives in January, the post is reproduced. Hey, remember when KeystoneXL was still an untouchable thing?
Last week, President Monkey unveiled his plan to combat facilitate en masse illegal immigration across the U.S. southern border.
Earlier that same week, the House and Senate both voted in favour of Keystone XL, though not with enough Senate votes to overrule President Monkey.
What do these two stories have in common? Easy, they occur during the infamous "lame duck" session where legislators are allowed to legislate even though they have been defeated in an election. The Keystone vote was symbolic, a way to push Democrats who were no longer worried about reelection into having to go on record opposing a deal that would likely pass soon after, humiliating their party despite almost certainly having no likelihood of passing. The immigration executive orders were a way to force in changes that had been summarily rejected by Congress and were far more likely to be heavily rejected in the next session starting in January.
First off, let's get this out of the way right now: America, this lame duck thing is ridiculous. No other country does this. In Canada or France or...well, anywhere...within a couple of days of the election, the loser goes home. They certainly don't get eleven weeks of time to legislate and do things. How crazy is that? These are the legislators that the electorate has fired. In today's well-connected world, these 10 weeks are a really really really really long time and need to go away. Presidents and Senators and Congressmen have too much time to do too much real damage.
While Keystone XL is a good idea long overdue, the Republicans pushing this ridiculous vote through was silly: it had no chance of passing, it was just using the legislative body for cheap political posturing. The time to move on Keystone XL is after your new guys are in the position, not when their old guys are leaving. If you want one of the reasons that the United States is in debt, remember that legislation like this costs money: the more work you give your civil service the bigger it has to be to perform it. As a general principle, the fewer laws you have to pass the better. I know that the various assistants and pages and staff that keep Congress (and Congressmen!) running aren't paid on a contract basis, but even full-time employees are subject to capacity restraints in their workload. If the Republicans didn't keep them busy with this silly lame-duck Keystone bill, they could have been doing work in preparation for the next session and reduce the overall workload. A 10.58% reduction in their workload (11 weeks out of the 102 weeks in between elections) should ultimately allow a 10.58% or so reduction in staffing levels. Again, when your country measures its debt with a trillion-dollar-yardstick it's the things like this you need to do to fix the problem.
Of course, this is a minor quibble compared to the despicable executive orders President Monkey enacted. For one, speaking of U.S. debt, this move is likely to increase the level of entitlements the government pays out more than the taxes it will take in. For another, while the executive orders themselves are (probably) not illegal they are certainly far more unilateral and overreaching than any executive order has any right to be. Most importantly, of course, is that this is almost entirely solving the wrong problem. The problem with the United States immigration crisis isn't that these people are undocumented, it's that the undocumented workers already have advantages no other American has.
Don't believe me? Here's Adam Carolla:
His point, that there's excessive government regulation in the US and that illegals are managing to avoid them, is a valid one. The only reason the "illegals" want to be legal is that they get extra government benefits that way.
