Before the English Civil War, British kings had a simple process for raising money for their various endeavors: they called a session of parliament and requested nationwide taxes and excise.
Parliament generally funded the kings, but if they refused, the king could dissolve the parliament. Eventually, that system ended after a series of mistakes by King Charles led to the rise of Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army.
President Obama faces no such obstacles.
Our elected King gets precisely what he wants from his compliant parliament. Elected Republicans refuse time and time again to use either of the constitutional powers delegated to them to stop an overreaching executive: impeachment or the power of the purse. Impeachment would likely fail simply due to lack of votes in the Senate. But refusal to pass conservative spending priorities out of fear that Obama will veto them and that the government will then “shut down” has paralyzed the Republican opposition to Obama.
So they just give Obama what he wants.
This has been true since conservatives returned Republicans to control of the House of Representatives in 2010. It’s been true even since Republicans gained control of the Senate in 2014. Obama’s string of victories has not reversed in any marked way.
Obamacare. Republicans campaigned in 2010 on stopping Obamacare if they were returned to power. In taking his Speakership gavel, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) vowed to “do everything we can” to repeal Obamacare, adding, “I believe the health care bill will kill jobs in America, ruin the best health care system in the world, and bankrupt our country.” That, of course, never happened. In every continuing resolution, Republicans have continued to fully fund Obamacare. When Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) urged the Republican House not to fund Obamacare in 2013, and Senate Democrats refused to budge from funding it fully, Republicans quickly caved, blaming Cruz rather than Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and President Obama. That awful, awful shutdown that was supposed to crush Republican hopes in 2014 ended with a massive tidal wave for Republicans. But that doesn’t stop Paul Ryan from funding Obamacare anyway in his new appropriations bill.
Executive Amnesty. In June 2012, President Obama issued his executive amnesty for illegal immigrants entering the country before the age of 16 and before June 2007. Just after the election of 2014, Obama expanded that program to include their parents. These two programs together shielded some nine million illegal immigrants from deportation under current American law. Despite the fact that Obama himself had said he had no authority to carry forth his executive amnesty, Republicans caved to him again. They ran on the promise of overruling his unconstitutional power grab. Then they proceeded to fully fund his executive amnesty before the end of 2014. Now they’ve continued to fund it under Paul Ryan’s omnibus appropriations package.
Defunding The Military. President Obama came into office pledging to end two wars – and end them he did, with losses. He also sought to significantly slash the military. This would be one area where Republicans were guaranteed to fight, right? Wrong. In 2011, Speaker of the House John Boehner signed off on the Budget Control Act of 2011, which automatically cut the budget – supposedly, since actual federal spending rose year-over-year anyway. The automatic budget cuts were never supposed to take place; Obama had insisted that any budget cuts to non-defense areas be matched by budget cuts to defense. Republicans, like idiots, signed off on this nonsense, believing Obama’s lie that Democrats would surely come to the table to avoid such strictures. It didn’t happen. Defense got slashed. Obama will keep it slashed.
Planned Parenthood. In the aftermath of the Planned Parenthood videos released by the Center for Medical Progress, showing Planned Parenthood employees bartering over the body parts of aborted babies, Republicans vowed to defund Planned Parenthood. That didn’t happen. Instead of providing Obama a budget minus that cash, Republicans went ahead and included the cash.
Climate Change. Republicans fumed over President Obama’s Paris deal, which promises that the developed world will give $100 billion per year to the developing world to compensate them for the supposed ill effects of anthropogenic climate change. Republicans said it was a treaty, and that they had no intention of giving Obama the cash to make it happen. Not so much. Under Paul Ryan’s budget, a slush fund for Obama’s climate deal remained in the bill.
The Iran Deal. Not only did Republicans pledge to oppose Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, they pledged to stop it. Instead, they gave Obama the full power to implement it with the insane Corker bill that reversed the treaty process, forcing Republicans to come up with a supermajority in the Senate in order to kill Obama’s deal. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said, “this is a piece of legislation worthy of our support. It offers the best chance we have to provide the American people and the Congress they elect with power to weigh in on a vital issue.” Well, no, actually – the Constitution did that. But why do you need the Constitution when you’ve got a monarch?
King Charles’ reign eventually broke on the shoals of resistance. There will be none from Republicans. No wonder Obama thanked his favored Republican noble, Ryan, for funding his priorities. “Merry Christmas,” Obama reportedly told Ryan. “Back at ya,” said Ryan. And, presumably, God save the King.
Ben Shapiro is Senior Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News, Editor-in-Chief of DailyWire.com, and The New York Times bestselling author, most recently, of the book, The People vs. Barack Obama: The Criminal Case Against The Obama Administration (Threshold Editions, June 10, 2014). Follow Ben Shapiro on Twitter @benshapiro.