8 Times Barack Obama Abused His Power To Appease His Base
By Matt Margolis
Joe Biden, now all in for 2020, has his sights set on Donald Trump. With daily attacks, he’s lobbing any accusation he can against Trump in the hopes that such attacks will get traction. His latest attack is to claim that President Trump has abused his powers. “There’s only one thing that stands in our way. It’s our broken political system that’s deliberately being undermined by our president to continue to abuse the power of the office,” Biden claimed, calling Trump “the only president who has decided not to represent the whole country. He has his base. We need a president who works for all Americans.”
Has Creepy Uncle Joe forgotten that thanks to Trump, African-American unemployment is at an all-time low? So is Hispanic unemployment. Last I checked, African Americans and Hispanic vote overwhelmingly Democrat. Women also vote more Democrat, but are thriving in the Trump economy. Looks to me as though Trump has been working for all Americans—even those not in his base.
But what really got me about Biden’s comments was the part about Trump allegedly abusing power. President Trump has spent much of the past two years trying to undo Obama’s abuses of power—which Obama did, not in the best interests of the whole country, but for the benefit of his base. Has Biden forgotten Obama’s presidency or is he just a bad liar? Many of these abuses should have resulted in Obama’s impeachment. Unfortunately, Republicans in Congress didn’t have the guts to impeach him, but they tried everything they could to reign in his pseudo-dictatorship. Two pieces of legislation were drafted in order to stop his abuses and force him to follow the law. Obama threatened to veto both bills rather than risk any limits on his ever-expanding legislative authority.
Below are 8 examples of Obama doing exactly what Joe Biden just accused Donald Trump of doing.
8. The illegal firing of an inspector general
As a U.S. senator, Barack Obama co-sponsored the 2008 Inspector General Reform Act, which protected inspectors general from being fired without cause. As president, Obama violated this law when he abruptly fired the inspector general of the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) Gerald Walpin without notice or providing the legally mandated explanation for the firing to Congress. Obama did this to protect Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, an ally of Obama, whom Walpin had been investigating for misusing federal funds, and had discovered a cover-up of sexual assault allegations by minors against Johnson.
Obama fired an inspector general to protect a friend of his who was accused of sexual assault and tried to cover it up with hush money that came from federal grant money. If Joe Biden doesn’t consider that an abuse of power, what exactly is the standard?
7. Obama’s failed “green energy” loans
Obama was so committed to creating a new “green economy” that he earmarked $80 billion for clean energy loans, grants, and tax credits as part of his economic stimulus for green energy companies in a highly politicized process benefiting companies that supported him.
We all know how that turned out.
At least fifty Obama-backed clean energy companies went bankrupt or found themselves in major financial trouble. The most well-known example is Solyndra, which received more than a half-billion dollar loan despite the fact the Department of Energy (DOE) knew they were on the verge of bankruptcy.
Both Barack Obama and Joe Biden were personally involved in the decision-making process to determine who got loans. DOE officials were concerned that their involvement was putting taxpayer dollars at risk. And a lawsuit from companies that were passed over for loans alleging that only donors to Obama and other Democrats were getting these loans, and that Obama’s DOE transferred proprietary technology from their companies to Obama cronies who were awarded the loans.
6. Claiming executive authority to unilaterally raise taxes
When it comes to taxes, Obama was always looking for ways to raise them. Even though Congress must approve of any tax increases, and any revenue-generating legislation must originate in the House of Representatives, Barack Obama was very interested in raising taxes via unilateral executive action.
“He believes he can rule by executive fiat and that the restrictions and limitations in the Constitution on the executive can just be ignored or shrugged off,” said Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation. “The president has no authority to raise taxes whatsoever. Only the House of Representatives can originate bills for raising taxes, and this would be just the latest unilateral, abusive, and unconstitutional action of the president.” Obama never actually attempted raising taxes via executive order, but the fact that Obama considered it is disturbing enough.
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