Trump vs Congress: o debate constitucional mais importante, desde os Founding Fathers - Daily 202

Exagero meu, eu sei, pois já tivemos outros debates muito importantes do mesmo teor, ou seja, a capacidade executiva do presidente americano, como no caso dos poderes de guerra (suscitados pela intervenção no Vietnã, e o desastre que se seguiu), com a consequente limitação dos poderes do presidente. Mas a situação atual não deixa de ser interessante.
Diferentemente dos sistemas parlamentaristas, os sistemas presidencialistas tendem a aumentar indevidamente o poder dos prresidentes, sobretudo em conexão com conflitos militares ou crises econômicas, o que significa, no caso americano, a Guerra Civil, ou de Secessão, a Grande Guerra, a depressão dos anos 1930 (FDR executiva measures), a Segunda Guerra, e todas as guerras do período da Guerra Fria. Eventually, ou oportunamente, o Congresso ou a Suprema Corte restabelecem o equilíbrio dos poderes entre si.
O próprio presidente Wilson, que prometeu manter os EUA fora da Grande Guerra e acabou tendo de mandar tropas para a Europa, escreveu, quando era presidente da Universidade Princeton (ou antes) um livro chamado Congressional Government, destacando justamente essa característica do presidencialismo americano, que atribui o essencial dos poderes aos representantes do povo, e não o presidente. Fez muito bem e Trump vai aprender agora a se comportar (ou não, pos ele é um Grande Idiota).
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Trump vs Congress

Trump stumbles are undercutting executive power, which may be healthy for America long-term

Trump signs Russia sanctions bill, calls it 'seriously flawed'

BY JAMES HOHMANN
with Breanne Deppisch and Joanie Greve

THE BIG IDEA: The White House has accumulated vastly more power than the men who wrote the Constitution intended, and one unintended consequence of the Trump presidency may be a long-term rebalancing between the three branches of the federal government.

Congress has repeatedly rolled over for presidents of both parties. Democrats looked the other way as Barack Obama used his pen and phone in sometimes constitutionally dubious ways. Republicans trusted George W. Bush to do the right thing, especially after the Sept. 11 attacks.

If they were put on truth serum, very few lawmakers of either party would tell you that they trust Donald Trump to do the right thing if left to his own devices. Especially vis-à-vis Vladimir Putin.

That’s why they almost unanimously passed a bill that ties his hands. Congress gave itself a 30-day review period to vote down any changes Trump tries to make to Russia sanctions.

Trump reluctantly signed the measure yesterday to avoid the humiliation of a veto override. But he issued two defiant signing statements, saying the “seriously flawed” legislation includes “a number of clearly unconstitutional provisions” by “limiting the Executive’s flexibility … to strike good deals.”

“The Framers of our Constitution put foreign affairs in the hands of the President,” Trump said. “This bill will prove the wisdom of that choice.”

That comment represents a bold assertion of presidential power and reveals a breathtakingly simplistic view regarding the separation of power. The Constitution, of course, gives Congress the power to declare war and ratify treaties.

Constitutional law experts agree that Congress is well within its rights. Michael Glennon from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts said Trump's statement is based on a “gross misreading” of case law. “That’s obviously a misguided interpretation of his constitutional authority,” he told Abby Phillip. “Congress has very broad authority over foreign commerce. It’s explicitly given the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations. It could have, if it desired, imposed those sanctions without giving the president any waiver authority whatsoever.”

Senate passes Russia sanctions bill

-- The balance of power has ebbed and flowed through history. The president claims fresh powers during wartime. Congress has reasserted itself after executive overreach, from Vietnam (e.g. the War Powers Act) to Watergate. Ronald Reagan’s presidency was nearly derailed when his administration funded the contras in Nicaragua, despite the Boland Amendment that barred him from doing so.

-- “Trump is something the nation did not know it needed: a feeble president whose manner can cure the nation’s excessive fixation with the presidency,” conservative thought leader George F. Will wrote in an important column over the weekend that got overshadowed by news of the latest White House shake-up: “Fortunately, today’s president is so innocent of information that Congress cannot continue deferring to executive policymaking. And because this president has neither a history of party identification nor an understanding of reciprocal loyalty, congressional Republicans are reacquiring a constitutional — a Madisonian — ethic. It mandates a prickly defense of institutional interests, placing those interests above devotion to parties that allow themselves to be defined episodically by their presidents. … Furthermore, today’s president is doing invaluable damage to Americans’ infantilizing assumption that the presidency magically envelops its occupant with a nimbus of seriousness. … For now, worse is better. Diminution drains this office of the sacerdotal pomposities that have encrusted it.”

John McCain speaks to journalists at the Capitol last Thursday night. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

-- A bipartisan chorus of leaders in Congress swiftly pushed back on Trump yesterday.

John McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the signing statement “misplaced.” Making a rhetorical allusion to the signing statement put out by the White House, he wrote: “The Framers of our Constitution made the Congress and the President coequal branches of government. This bill has already proven the wisdom of that choice.”

“On this critical issue of national security policy, it was the Congress that acted in the spirit of national unity to carry out the will of the American people,” the 2008 Republican presidential nominee wrote in a statement from Arizona, where he’s battling brain cancer. “And that is why it is critical that the President comply with the letter and spirit of this legislation and fully implement all of its provisions. Going forward, I hope the President will be as vocal about Russia’s aggressive behavior as he was about his concerns with this legislation.”

“Today, the United States sent a powerful message to our adversaries that they will be held accountable for their actions,” House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said in his own statement about Trump signing the bill. “We will continue to use every instrument of American power to defend this nation and the people we serve.”

-- Generally, Republicans are talking much more strongly about the separation of powers than they were in the months after Trump took office.

“We work for the American people. We don’t work for the president,” said Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), in an interview with Sean Sullivan. “We should do what’s good for the administration as long as that does not in any way, shape or form make it harder on the American people.”

“President Trump won. I respect his victory. I want to help him with health care and do other things that I think we can do together like cut taxes,” added Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). “I’ll push back against ideas I think are bad for the country, like changing the rules of the Senate. And that’s the way I’m going to engage the president.”

Graham has always been critical of Trump, but other once-outspoken Republican defenders of the president are sounding more critical. When he was asked to respond to The Post's report about the president's role in dictating Donald Jr.'s misleading statement about his meeting with a Russian national at Trump Tower, Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho) told CBS News: “I guarantee you there were phone calls in addition to those emails, and I want to hear all of it before I answer the question you put to me.”

Sanders: Trump signed Russia sanctions bill in the 'interest of national unity'

-- Signing statements aren’t unusual. Bush and Obama routinely issued them to express concerns about bills even as they reluctantly accepted them to avoid the risk of an override.

But Trump’s statement on the Russia bill, naturally, included a Trumpian flourish that is very unusual in a normally legalistic document: “I built a truly great company worth many billions of dollars. That is a big part of the reason I was elected,” he said. “As President, I can make far better deals with foreign countries than Congress.”

U.S. abandons Moscow diplomatic properties

-- Validating Congress’s decision to tie his hands, though, Trump continues naively playing footsie with Putin.

Russia retaliated against the United States for the sanctions over the weekend, ordering the U.S. embassy to reduce its staff by 755 people and seizing U.S. diplomatic properties. Even as he took the time to attack Golf Magazine on Twitter last night, though, Trump has yet to issue any kind of statement on Putin’s affront to our country. The silence has been deafening, especially against the backdrop of Trump refusing to fully accept the consensus of the intelligence community that Moscow interfered in the 2016 election.

The prime minister of Russia trolled Trump (on Twitter and in English!), and even that couldn’t get a rise out of him:

Former U.S. ambassador to Russia and Stanford professor Mike McFaul replied: 

Vice President Pence speaks in Montenegro. (Stevo Vasiljevic/Reuters)

-- Trump’s desire to appease Moscow puts him at odds with most members of his own national security team – including Mike Pence, who returned overnight from a 3 1/2-day trip through Eastern Europe. “At nearly every stop, the vice president spoke forcefully about the specter of Russian aggression, talked of ‘peace through strength,’ and reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to the North American Treaty Organization, reiterating its cornerstone pledge that an attack on one nation is an attack on all,” reports Ashley Parker, who traveled aboard Air Force Two.

Many of the interested parties, including the Baltic States and the Russians, aren’t sure to what degree Pence truly speaks for Trump, which means that his hardline policy pronouncements don’t pack the punch they otherwise might.

In an interview with Parker yesterday, Pence said Trump is taking a “we’ll see” attitude toward Russia and said the administration hopes the sanctions will lead to an improved relationship.

Tom Cotton listens to Trump speak at the White House yesterday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

-- Republicans in Congress are now readying for round two with Trump on Russia, as hawks search for additional ways to box in the president. “Language in key defense bills in both the House and Senate would require the military to begin developing medium-range missiles banned by a 1987 treaty,” Politico’s Bryan Bender reports. “Supporters of the provisions — including Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas — assert that Russia's recent deployment of an intermediate-range missile in violation of the treaty requires the U.S. to respond in kind. … The House’s language, included in the National Defense Authorization Act passed last month, would create a program for developing a land-based missile that is banned by the INF Treaty. The Senate will soon debate a similar provision in its version of the defense policy bill, which would set aside $65 million and also require the military to reintroduce a missile capable of traveling between 500 and 5,500 kilometers — a weapon that both Cold War rivals phased out three decades ago.”

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Presidencia imperial de Mr. Obama - resposta republicana ao State ofthe Union

OPINION

Ted Cruz: The Imperial Presidency of Barack Obama

In the nation's history, there is simply no precedent for an American president so wantonly ignoring federal law.

Ted Cruz

The Wall Street Journal, January 28, 2014

Of all the troubling aspects of the Obama presidency, none is more dangerous than the president's persistent pattern of lawlessness, his willingness to disregard the written law and instead enforce his own policies via executive fiat. On Monday, Mr. Obama acted unilaterally to raise the minimum wage paid by federal contracts, the first of many executive actions the White House promised would be a theme of his State of the Union address Tuesday night.

The president's taste for unilateral action to circumvent Congress should concern every citizen, regardless of party or ideology. The great 18th-century political philosopher Montesquieu observed: "There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or body of magistrates." America's Founding Fathers took this warning to heart, and we should too.

Enlarge Image

At a White House reception for U.S. mayors, Jan. 23.Reuters

Rule of law doesn't simply mean that society has laws; dictatorships are often characterized by an abundance of laws. Rather, rule of law means that we are a nation ruled by laws, not men. That no one—and especially not the president—is above the law. For that reason, the U.S. Constitution imposes on every president the express duty to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed."

Yet rather than honor this duty, President Obama has openly defied it by repeatedly suspending, delaying and waiving portions of the laws he is charged to enforce. When Mr. Obama disagreed with federal immigration laws, he instructed the Justice Department to cease enforcing the laws. He did the same thing with federal welfare law, drug laws and the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

On many of those policy issues, reasonable minds can disagree. Mr. Obama may be right that some of those laws should be changed. But the typical way to voice that policy disagreement, for the preceding 43 presidents, has been to work with Congress to change the law. If the president cannot persuade Congress, then the next step is to take the case to the American people. As President Reagan put it: "If you can't make them see the light, make them feel the heat" of electoral accountability.

President Obama has a different approach. As he said recently, describing his executive powers: "I've got a pen, and I've got a phone." Under the Constitution, that is not the way federal law is supposed to work.

The Obama administration has been so brazen in its attempts to expand federal power that the Supreme Court has unanimously rejected the Justice Department's efforts to expand federal power nine times since January 2012.

There is no example of lawlessness more egregious than the enforcement—or nonenforcement—of the president's signature policy, the Affordable Care Act. Mr. Obama has repeatedly declared that "it's the law of the land." Yet he has repeatedly violated ObamaCare's statutory text.

The law says that businesses with 50 or more full-time employees will face the employer mandate on Jan. 1, 2014. President Obama changed that, granting a one-year waiver to employers. How did he do so? Not by going to Congress to change the text of the law, but through a blog post by an assistant secretary at Treasury announcing the change.

The law says that only Americans who have access to state-run exchanges will be subject to employer penalties and may obtain ObamaCare premium subsidies. This was done to entice the states to create exchanges. But, when 34 states decided not to establish state-run exchanges, the Obama administration announced that the statutory words "established by State" would also mean "established by the federal government."

The law says that members of Congress and their staffs' health coverage must be anObamaCare exchange plan, which would prevent them from receiving their current federal-employee health subsidies, just like millions of Americans who can't receive such benefits. At the behest of Senate Democrats, the Obama administration instead granted a special exemption (deeming "individual" plans to be "group" plans) to members of Congress and their staffs so they could keep their pre-existing health subsidies.

Most strikingly, when over five million Americans found their health insurance plans canceled because ObamaCare made their plans illegal—despite the president's promise "if you like your plan, you can keep it"—President Obama simply held a news conference where he told private insurance companies to disobey the law and issue plans that ObamaCare regulated out of existence.

In other words, rather than go to Congress and try to provide relief to the millions who are hurting because of the "train wreck" of ObamaCare (as one Senate Democrat put it), the president instructed private companies to violate the law and said he would in effect give them a get-out-of-jail-free card—for one year, and one year only. Moreover, in a move reminiscent of Lewis Carroll's looking-glass world, President Obama simultaneously issued a veto threat if Congress passed legislation doing what he was then ordering.

In the more than two centuries of our nation's history, there is simply no precedent for the White House wantonly ignoring federal law and asking private companies to do the same. As my colleague Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa asked, "This was the law. How can they change the law?"

Similarly, 11 state attorneys general recently wrote a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius saying that the continuing changes to ObamaCare are "flatly illegal under federal constitutional and statutory law." The attorneys general correctly observed that "the only way to fix this problem-ridden law is to enact changes lawfully: through Congressional action."

In the past, when Republican presidents abused their power, many Republicans—and the press—rightly called them to account. Today many in Congress—and the press—have chosen to give President Obama a pass on his pattern of lawlessness, perhaps letting partisan loyalty to the man supersede their fidelity to the law.

But this should not be a partisan issue. In time, the country will have another president from another party. For all those who are silent now: What would they think of a Republican president who announced that he was going to ignore the law, or unilaterally change the law? Imagine a future president setting aside environmental laws, or tax laws, or labor laws, or tort laws with which he or she disagreed.

That would be wrong—and it is the Obama precedent that is opening the door for future lawlessness. As Montesquieu knew, an imperial presidency threatens the liberty of every citizen. Because when a president can pick and choose which laws to follow and which to ignore, he is no longer a president.

Mr. Cruz, a Republican senator from Texas, serves as the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights.

Depois do AeroLula, vem ai o AeroDilma: faz sentido, um aviao so é pouco...

Lula disse que o avião que comprou não presta, e que precisa de outro, talvez para dar uma volta ao mundo sem precisar se reabastecer. Faz sentido: um presidente assim importante não pode ficar parando em qualquer posto de reabastecimento... Tem de ter autonomia de voo, ora essa!
Sobretudo para um presidente que é a encarnação da classe trabalhadora. Classe trabalhadora não pode ser obstaculizada em sua marcha ascensional...
Nunca mais um presidente vai se humilhar por ter de fazer pit stop...

Lula defende compra de novo avião presidencial

Segundo o presidente, a aeronave atual, um Airbus-319, não tem autonomia de voo suficiente para longos percursos

Leonêncio Nossa, da Agência Estado, 30 de novembro de 2010 

ESTREITO, MA - O presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defendeu nesta terça-feira, 30, a compra de um novo avião para as viagens de sua sucessora Dilma Rousseff. Em entrevista realizada durante visita ao Maranhão, ele argumentou que a aeronave atual, um Airbus-319, não tem autonomia de voo suficiente para longos percursos. "Não tem porque não comprar", disse.
No canteiro das obras da usina hidrelétrica de Estreito, na divisa do Maranhão com Tocantins, ele aproveitou para ironizar as críticas à decisão tomada no início de seu governo de adquirir o Airbus-319. Esse avião, batizado pelo Planalto de Santos Dumont e pela imprensa de "Aerolula", poderá, no próximo governo, ser substituído por uma aeronave mais eficiente. "Acabou aquela bobagem do 'Aerolula'", disse. "Agora, estou chateado porque vou deixar a Presidência e não levar o avião comigo."
Ainda em tom de ironia, ele propôs uma campanha da imprensa para ficar com o "Aerolula" após deixar o governo. "Poderia fazer uma campanha e levar o avião comigo", disse. Ele avaliou que a autonomia de 12 horas de voo do Airbus-319 não atende à demanda das viagens mais longas da Presidência.
Daí a necessidade de uma nova aeronave, já batizada de "Aerodilma" antes mesmo de o governo bater o martelo. "O Brasil precisa de um avião com maior autonomia para o presidente da República viajar", afirmou Lula. "É uma vergonha ter um avião de apenas 12 horas de autonomia."
==============

Em discurso, Lula diz que é a 'encarnação do povo'

De improviso, Lula reconheceu que seus antecessores não tiveram as mesmas condições que ele para governar

Leonencio Nossa/ESTREITO (MA) - O Estado de S.Paulo, 30 de novembro de 2010 

 

A um mês de deixar o Planalto, o presidente Lula revelou nesta terça-feira, 30, que, na crise do mensalão, em 2005, ameaçou o Congresso dizendo-se "a encarnação do povo". Ele aproveitou um discurso de improviso durante visita ao canteiro de obras da usina hidrelétrica de Estreito para relatar encontros privados com o senador José Sarney (PMDB).
"Uma vez o Sarney foi conversar comigo e eu disse: Sarney, eu só quero que o senhor diga lá dentro (Congresso Nacional) o seguinte: Se eles (oposição) tentarem dar um passo além da institucionalidade, eles não sabem o que vai acontecer neste País", relatou. "Este País teve presidente que foi embora, presidente que se matou ou foi cassado. Eles vão saber que eu sou diferente. Que não é o Lula que está na Presidência, mas a classe trabalhadora".
Lula confidenciou que tinha "muita dúvida" se teria condições de governar o País. "Este País já tinha criado as condições para o Getúlio Vargas se matar, não deixar o Juscelino assumir e cassou o João Goulart. Eu falei: o que eles vão aprontar comigo? E eles tentaram em 2005. Só que eles não sabiam que este País, pela primeira vez, tinha eleito um presidente que era a encarnação do povo, lá em Brasília."
No discurso atípico, Lula reconheceu que seus antecessores não tiveram as mesmas condições que ele ao assumir o comando do País. "Eu tenho consciência que outros presidentes não tiveram as mesmas condições que eu. O presidente Sarney pegou o Brasil em época de crise. O Fernando Henrique Cardoso, mesmo se quisesse fazer, não poderia, pois o Brasil estava atolado numa dívida com o FMI. Quando você deve, tem até medo de abrir a porta e o cobrador te pegar", disse Lula.
Obra. O presidente observou que a inauguração da obra ficará para o próximo governo. "É a Dilma que virá inaugurar, mas eu tinha que vir para fechar a comporta, pelo menos", disse, lembrando que desmarcou três visitas à obra por causa de problemas nas áreas ambiental e social. Comunidades ribeirinhas denunciam que estão sendo prejudicadas pela construção.
O presidente afirmou que recentemente foi firmado um acordo entre o consórcio Estreito Energia, construtor do projeto, e o movimento de atingidos pelas barragens. Pelo acordo, a empresa se responsabilizará por garantir a realocação das famílias e criar condições para que os pescadores continuem suas atividades.

O "nunca antes" se amplia ao continente: nunca depois a Unasul sera como antes...

Bem, parece-me uma consequencia lógica do personagem: nunca antes a Unasul terá sido governada, se confirmada a escolha de Lula para seu posto máximo, por um presidente tão popular, não apenas em seu país, mas em todo continente.
Curioso que a Casa -- encarnação anterior da Unasul -- deveria ter seu secretariado no Rio de Janeiro, o que seria bem mais agradável -- e mais "à mão" -- para Lula continuar jogando em vários tabuleiros ao mesmo tempo, mas essa possibilidade foi recusada por quase todos os "parceiros" sul-americanos, que acabaram aceitando a proposta de Chávez para colocar o secretariado em Quito. Se Lula tiver de passar em Miami para vir ao Brasil, certamente vai tratar de mudar também esse "nunca antes".
Vamos ver...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Lula pode ocupar a secretaria da Unasul

Agencia EFE, Quito, 16 noviembre 201
 
O presidente equatoriano, Rafael Correa, disse nesta terça-feira que o presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ou o ex-governante uruguaio, Tabaré Vázquez, poderiam ocupar a secretaria da União de Nações Sul-Americanas (Unasul).
O cargo ficou sem representante depois da morte do ex-presidente argentino, Néstor Kirchner.
A agência de notícias “Andes” informou que o tema foi abordado pelos chefes de Estado do Equador e do Uruguai, José Mujica, durante a visita oficial que o uruguaio realizou ao país andino.
“Teremos que seguir fazendo consultas, ainda não há um consenso, estamos só reunindo ideias”, assinalou o governante equatoriano à imprensa.
Além disso, Correa comentou que na lista estão muitos ex-presidentes da região, “portanto temos que seguir pensando um pouquinho, tomara que possamos conseguir um nome de consenso até Georgetown”.
Na capital de Guiana ocorrerá, em 26 de novembro, uma cúpula presidencial do Grupo, na qual o Equador entregará a Presidência.
O presidente equatoriano se mostrou esperançoso de que, até essa data, receba uma ratificação adicional do tratado constitutivo da Unasul, que daria caráter legal ao organismo.
“Temos oito países que aprovaram o tratado e nos falta um para que a Unasul tenha vida jurídica”, acrescentou.