AFF POLITICS ANSWERS
IRAN NON-UNIQUES
Iran deal will cost Obama Democratic support
Davis 7/14 [Susan is the chief congressional reporter for USA TODAY. “Congress unlikely to block Iran
deal”, http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/07/14/congress-iran-deal/30125885/,
7/14/15]
Not all Democrats lined up in support. Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., a leading Democratic voice on foreign
policy, said he was concerned the deal legitimizes Iran as "a threshold-nuclear state" with unsatisfactory
conditions on lifting sanctions and allowing inspections. "The bottom line is: The deal doesn't end Iran's
nuclear program--it preserves it," Menendez said. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., the next majority leader and a leading voice in
support of Israel, struck a cautious tone. Schumer was an early support of Corker's legislation to enhance congressional oversight of the deal.
"Supporting or opposing this agreement is not a decision to be made lightly, and I plan to carefully study
the agreement before making an informed decision," he said.
Controversy inevitable- GOP backlash to Iran.
Davis 7/14 [Susan is the chief congressional reporter for USA TODAY. “Congress unlikely to block Iran
deal”, http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/07/14/congress-iran-deal/30125885/,
7/14/15]
Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters that the deal was "unacceptable" and that Republicans
would work to block it from taking effect. "We're going to do everything we can to get to the details,
and if, in fact, it's as bad a deal as I think it is at this moment, we'll do everything we can to stop it," he
said. Senate Republicans likewise issued critical assessments of the deal. "The Senate must now weigh why a nuclear
agreement should result in reduced pressure on the world's leading state sponsor of terror,' said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, RKy. "We'll
hold hearings and examine the agreement, including several aspects that are particularly
integral to understanding what concessions the Iranians were able to secure from the Obama
Administration." Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark, the lawmaker behind a controversial letter signed by 47 GOP senators earlier this year warning
Iranian leaders that any deal may not last past the current administration, called the deal "a grievous, dangerous mistake."
Iran deal will cost Obama PC
Dennis 7/13 [Steven is a senior White House correspondant with Roll Call, “Senate Democrats Warn
White House on Iran Arms Embargo”, http://blogs.rollcall.com/wgdb/senate-democrats-warn-whitehouse-on-iran-arms-embargo/?dcz=, 7/14/15]
Ending the arms embargo on Iran — something White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest refused to
rule out Monday — is causing the administration trouble with Capitol Hill Democrats. One, Sen. Robert
Menendez, D-N.J., a frequent critic of the administration’s Iran strategy, blasted the idea. “Listen, the
last thing we need to do is give Iran the ability to have the wherewithal to have arms going throughout
the region,” he said. “They’re already involved in Yemen, in Syria, in Lebanon, in Iraq. And there’s another reason. What is lost here is
that if we lift the arms embargo, then the Russians freely can sell the S-300 to them. “That makes it a lot more difficult in the
future — should Iran violate the agreement and move towards their nuclear capability for a nuclear
weapon — of trying to strike them with the S-300 as a defensive weapon system.” Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del.,
another member of the Foreign Relations Committee, also said he opposes lifting the embargo. “That’s not something I’ve been consulted on,
and I frankly think this was an Iranian gambit at the last minute to try and divide the United States and its European allies from China and Russia
which have a desire to sell weapons to Iran,” he said in a CNN interview. “I think Iran’s behavior in the region, its support for terrorism, and its
export of weapons and material and fighting men to support Bashar al-Assad’s murderous regime in Syria, to support the Houthis in Yemen,
and to support Hezbollah in Lebanon should be of real concern to us. “This
was to be a negotiation about their illicit nuclear
weapons program and to throw on the table at the last minute a lifting of the arms embargo strikes me
as trying to broaden the scope of the negotiations.” However, United Nations resolutions targeting
Iran’s nuclear program going back nearly a decade have imposed various arms embargoes. Lifting them would
not require an act of Congress. But the broader deal could lead to a resolution of disapproval from Congress. Obama would ultimately need the
backing of a third plus one in either chamber to avoid a veto override. In addition to a potential fight with Senate Democrats, the White House
might have some work to do with Pentagon brass to get them on board should the embargo go by the wayside. Martin Dempsey, the chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked by Sen. Kelly Ayotte last week about lifting restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile program. “Under no
circumstances should we relieve pressure on Iran relative to ballistic missile capabilities and arms trafficking,” he told the New Hampshire
Republican.
Iran Deal Impact Defense
Timeframe of Nuclear deal impact is years away.
Pace 7/14 [Julie is a White House Correspondant for the AP, “Obama Puts Congress on Notice”
http://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2015/07/14/obama-warns-congress-not-to-stand-inway-of-iran-deal, 7/14/15]
It will likely be well after Obama has left the White House before it is known whether the deal succeeds in preventing Iran from building a
bomb. Critics say
Iran cannot be trusted even with the lower levels of nuclear technology it will be allowed
to retain under the terms of the agreement. With the deal between the world powers now finalized,
Congress has 60 days to assess the accord and decide whether to pursue legislation imposing new
sanctions on Iran or prevent Obama from suspending existing ones. Obama called congressional leaders
Monday night to alert them that a deal was at hand. In his remarks Tuesday, the president renewed his vow to veto any
such legislation and urged lawmakers to consider the repercussions of their actions. He painted a grim scenario in which the rest of the world
struck its own nuclear deals with Iran, leaving the U.S. isolated. And without the limitations and verifications included in the deal announced
Tuesday, Obama said
he or a future U.S. president would be more likely to face a decision about using U.S.
military action to prevent Iran from building a bomb. In addition to his calls with congressional
lawmakers, administration officials said Obama was likely to speak Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu, Saudi Arabia's King Salman, and European leaders. Obama acknowledged Tuesday
that the U.S. and Iran remain at odds over many issues, including Tehran's support for terrorism in the
Middle East and its detention of several American citizens. Still, he suggested a breakthrough on the
nuclear issue could pave the way for a broader shift in relations between the U.S. and Iran. "This deal
offers an opportunity to move in a new direction," Obama said. "We should seize it."
AT: Diamond democracy card – democratic decline inevit
1. Due to long term down turns in the US economy showing the weakness in American
politics, democracy in the western world is in decline.
Gallo and Biava, 13
(Ernesto Gallo, scholar of international relations; Giovanni Biava, writer on international politics whose work is frequently published by Giovine
Europa Now. “Western democracy: decline”, 11/13/13, https://www.opendemocracy.net/ernesto-gallo-giovanni-biava/western-democracydecline-and, LJG)
long-term trends suggest that politics and democracy in the western world are declining. Since the
end of the cold war, this crisis has accelerated and become ever more visible. Among these trends are
Many
globalisation itself, both as idea and practice; a sustained expansion of financial markets; free trader, symbolised by organisations such as the
WTO and the NAFTA agreements; and the dotcom industry's long boom. They emerged especially during Bill Clinton’s years in the White House
(1993-2000). The Nasdaq composite (stock-market index) jumped from 1,000
in 1995 to a peak of 5,048.62 on 10 March 2000. There
was general high trust in an economy which grew in those years at an average annual rate of 4%, while unemployment fell from
6.9 to 4%. The 1990s was the high time of the widespread conviction that markets "solve everything", which was
accompanied by a gradual "retreat of politics". This new orthodoxy was not without consequences, however. The decade
ended with the bursting of the dotcom bubble in the United States, while other regions had experienced the fresh turbulence of increasing
interdependence in trade and finance; among them, Mexico's crisis (1994), southeast Asia’s crisis (1997), Russia’s default (1998), and
Argentina’s traumatic economic collapse (1999-2002). At the same time, the European Union was marching convincingly towards the coveted
"single currency". Few noticed the anomaly of a monetary union without a political union, an almost unprecedented fact in international
history. It took a decade after the euro's launch in 1999 for its and the EU’s problems to the fore, with tremendous results both domestically (a
widespread loss of faith in the European project) and internationally (the EU's disappearance as a political player). In the
first years of
the millennium, the decline of politics became more apparent in the US as well. After the two presidential terms of
George W Bush, many hopes were invested in Barack Obama’s leadership; but he has proved largely ineffective (as is particularly evident during
This, though, is only the latest in a chain of episodes which have exposed the weakness of
American politics, and not just its presidents. The policy failures are everywhere, from the mismanagement of the so-called "Arab
the Syrian crisis).
spring", the inability to curb a huge public debt (a 106% debt-GDP ration in late 2013), and the most recent and embarrassing government
shutdown. The latter casts renewed light on the possibility that in the medium-to-long-term the dollar will lose its status as the world's trading
and reserve currency. The shutdown also mirrors the inefficiencies of EU politics in recent years. In parallel with these economic trends,
the
role of western liberal democracy is also increasingly being questioned as old or new rivals - partly in
response to the US-led neo-liberal assault of the 1990s - offer alternative models. Russia proposes its own form of authoritarian rule
(sometimes labelled "Putinism") where influence is wielded by technocrats, a clique of intelligence agents, heads of state energy corporations,
all underpinned by media control and marginalised opposition. A similar model dominates across central Asia.
2. Failure of democracy is inevitable, history proves
The Economist 14
(Economist, well known news sources, “What’s gone wrong with democracy”, 2/28/14, http://www.economist.com/news/essays/21596796democracy-was-most-successful-political-idea-20th-century-why-has-it-run-trouble-and-what-can-be-do, LJG)
Where autocrats have been driven out of office, their opponents have
mostly failed to create viable democratic regimes. Even in established democracies, flaws in the system
have become worryingly visible and disillusion with politics is rife. Yet just a few years ago democracy looked as though
Democracy is going through a difficult time.
it would dominate the world. In the second half of the 20th century, democracies had taken root in the most difficult circumstances possible—
in Germany, which had been traumatised by Nazism, in India, which had the world’s largest population of poor people, and, in the 1990s, in
South Africa, which had been disfigured by apartheid. Decolonialisation created a host of new democracies in Africa and Asia, and autocratic
regimes gave way to democracy in Greece (1974), Spain (1975), Argentina (1983), Brazil (1985) and Chile (1989). The collapse of the Soviet
Union created many fledgling democracies in central Europe. By 2000 Freedom House, an American think-tank, classified 120 countries, or 63%
of the world total, as democracies. Representatives of more than 100 countries gathered at the World Forum on Democracy in Warsaw that
year to proclaim that “the will of the people” was “the basis of the authority of government”. A report issued by America’s State Department
declared that having seen off “failed experiments” with authoritarian and totalitarian forms of government, “it seems that now, at long last,
democracy is triumphant. Such hubris was surely understandable after such a run of successes. But
stand farther back and the
triumph of democracy looks rather less inevitable. After the fall of Athens, where it was first developed, the political model
had lain dormant until the Enlightenment more than 2,000 years later. In the 18th century only the American revolution produced a sustainable
democracy. During the 19th century monarchists fought a prolonged rearguard action against democratic forces. In the first half of the 20th
century nascent democracies collapsed in Germany, Spain and Italy. By 1941 there were only 11 democracies left, and Franklin Roosevelt
worried that it might not be possible to shield “the great flame of democracy from the blackout of barbarism”.
Democracy Impact Takeouts
Democracy doesn’t produce real economic prosperity or freedom. Latin America
proves voters often elect future dictators.
Hornberger, ’14 [Jacob, attorney and founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation,
“DEMOCRACY IS NEITHER FREEDOM NOR PROSPERITY,” Hornberger’s Blog, October 23, 2014,
http://fff.org/2014/10/23/democracy-is-neither-freedom-nor-prosperity-3/]
There is a very simple explanation for that phenomenon: Democracy
does not produce economic prosperity and does
not guarantee freedom from tyranny. What is democracy? It’s simply a political system by which people are
selected for public office. That’s all. Its primary benefit is that it enables people to change regimes peacefully — that is, without the
need for a violent revolution. It guarantees neither freedom nor prosperity. While democracy is important in the sense that it
enables people to replace public officials with new people, what matters from the standpoint of individual liberty and
economic prosperity is the nature of the powers that public officials wield after they are elected. If, for
example, people have the freedom to elect a president with totalitarian powers, that is as far from a free
society as one can get. Latin Americans have long experienced this particular phenomenon. It’s been said that they
have the freedom to elect their dictators every four or six years.
Without a massive reduction in state power, democracy can’t produce prosperity and
liberty.
Hornberger, ’14 [Jacob, attorney and founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation,
“DEMOCRACY IS NEITHER FREEDOM NOR PROSPERITY,” Hornberger’s Blog, October 23, 2014,
http://fff.org/2014/10/23/democracy-is-neither-freedom-nor-prosperity-3/]
A democracy political system also does not bring into existence an economically prosperous society. Economic
prosperity depends on economic liberty, not on democracy. If Tunisians or anyone else want a prosperous society, there
is but one solution: a complete separation of economy and the state and of money and the state. That is, a way of life in
which people are free to engage in any occupation or business without a license or permission from the state, to freely enter into economic
enterprise without governmental control or regulation, to enter into mutually beneficial economic transactions with others anywhere in the
world without governmental interference, and to keep everything one earns and decide for himself what to do with it. It is a way of life in which
government is prohibited from taking money from people in order to give it to another group. It is a way of life that depends on sound money–
e.g., a free-market monetary system rather than the fiat paper system money of the state. In other words, economic prosperity
depends on ending the dead hand of the state in people’s everyday economic activities. It means dismantling
all the socialistic and regulatory programs by which the state purports to take care of people. It also means
dismantling the enormous warfare-state bureaucracies, which suck the life out of a society. It means abolishing all the taxes that fund a
welfare-warfare state apparatus. The
most democratic political system in the world can also have the most
tyrannical government and the impoverished society in the world. The most democracy can do is allow people to change
political regimes peacefully — that is, without the need for a violent revolution. For a genuinely free and prosperous society, it is
necessary for people to constitutionally protect economic liberty and civil liberties from infringement on the
part of those who are elected to public office.
Democracy is Bad
Democracy promotion brings wars and chaos to newly democratized countries.
MANSFIELD AND SYNDER 02 [Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder, Professor of Political Science
and director of the Christopher H. Browne Center for International Politics at the University of
Pennsylvania, Democratic Transitions, Institutional Strength, and War 2002. <
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/international_organization/v056/56.2mansfield.html>]
In short, newly democratizing countries often experience a weakening of central state institutions because their
old institutions have eroded and their new ones are only partially developed. Autocratic power is in decline vis-à-vis both elite interest groups
and mass groups, and democratic institutions lack the strength to integrate these contending interests and views.
Not all newly democratizing states suffer from institutional weakness, but for those that do the resulting political dynamic creates conditions
that encourage hostilities. In the face of this institutional deficit, political leaders
rely on expedient strategies to cope with the
political impasse of democratization. Such tactics, which often include the appeasement of nationalist veto groups or
competition among factions in nationalist bidding wars (or both), can breed reckless foreign policies and the resort
to war.
Democratizing in the wrong sequence not only risks bloodshed in the short term – also
prevents stable transitions in the long term
MANSFIELD AND SYNDER 07 [Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder, Professor of Political Science
and director of the Christopher H. Browne Center for International Politics at the University of
Pennsylvania, The Sequencing "Fallacy" 2007<
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/international_organization/v056/56.2mansfield.html>]
Trenchant articles in the January 2007 issue of the Journal of Democracy by two of the most astute observers of democratization and political
development, Thomas Carothers and Sheri Berman, acknowledge the now widely recognized fact that countries taking
early steps on
the journey from dictatorship toward electoral politics are especially prone to civil and international war,
violent revolution, and ethnic and sectarian bloodshed. Indeed, they accept our argument about turbulent
democratization—advanced in a series of articles and two books published since 1995—and then go us one better, charging us with being too
optimistic about sequencing democratic change in ways that might reduce its risks.1 Our findings are consistent with the conjecture that out-
of-sequence transition attempts delay the eventual achievement of stable democracy, although this issue was
not a central focus of our research. Many troubled partial democracies have long retained the institutional deformities born of an initial
transition from autocracy that failed to produce a coherent democracy. For example, the connection
between Serbian ethnic
nationalism and political demagogy began with early experiments with mass electoral politics in the
nineteenth century, a pattern that persisted in the face of communist and liberal attempts to break this connection. Likewise, the
foundational role of the military in Argentine, Pakistani, and Turkish mass-nationalist politics established
a recurrent pattern of oscillations between semidemocracy and military rule. Similarly, Colombia's pattern of urban
semidemocracy and violent rural anarchy, established during the "La Violencia" bloodletting that followed the disastrous opening to mass
politics in the late 1940s, has become entrenched in subsequent decades.
Democracies are unreliable
Runciman ‘13
The Guardian, 11/8/13, Democracies don’t work well, David Runciman [is a British political scientist who teaches political theory
at Cambridge University and is a fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He was educated at Eton College and Trinity College,
Cambridge.]Runciman has worked as a columnist for The Guardian newspaper and written for many other publications. He
currently writes about politics for the London Review of Books.His monograph, The Politics of Good Intentions, was adapted in
part from his LRB articles. His book, Political Hypocrisy (2008), explores the political uses of hypocrisy from a historical
perspective. His latest book, The Confidence Trap: A History of Democracy in Crisis from World War I to the Present (2013), lays
out his theory of the threat of democratic overconfidence ]
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/08/trouble-with-democracy-david-runciman
Then things got worse. For
17 days in October the US government ceased to function altogether, while
bitter infighting in Washington took the country to the brink of a disastrous default. The sight of
American politicians playing their absurd game of chicken with the global economy left the rest
of the world with conflicted emotions, ranging from despair to barely concealed glee . Putin smirked.
The Chinese tut-tutted. Bureaucrats in Brussels gave a world-weary sigh. Politicians who do not have to worry about
getting re-elected or who face only docile and compliant parliaments found themselves looking
on with a mixture of pity and contempt. Imagine trying to do serious politics under the
relentless pressure of eternal democratic squabbling, with barely enough time to breathe, let
alone to think straight. Is it any way to run a government? Those of us who live in the western democracies might
sometimes be tempted to agree. Dictator envy is a habitual feature of democratic politics . We don't actually want
to live under a dictatorship – we still have a horror of what that would entail – but we do envy dictators their ability to act
decisively in a crisis. For all his many faults, it is hard to imagine that Putin is often in the dark about what his spooks are up to. We
may laugh at all those photographs of him stripped to the waist and hunting wildlife. Still, this is evidently a politician who knows how to go for
the kill. Do ours even know what they are hunting for? While
Obama was trapped in Washington grinding out a
provisional solution to the shutdown, China's leaders were exploiting his absence from the
world stage to promote the pragmatic benefits of their political system. Chinese politicians have the
advantage of being able to take the long view, freed from the remorseless demands of the electoral cycle. At the same time, China's
technocrats can cut through all the checks and balances of democratic politics to take speedy
decisions. They don't have to worry about squaring parliament or public opinion before they
act. I have lost count of the number of times I have been told by western academics how refreshing it is to deal with Chinese
politicians who can get things done. If you have an exciting plan to green an urban environment,
or recalibrate a transport system, or reboot an entire industry, take it to China, where they
might actually give it a go before it becomes stale. None (or at least vanishingly few) of these western academics
actually want to adopt Chinese state capitalism, which they consider an oppressive and illiberal system. They are invariably still wedded to
democracy. They just wish it could be similarly decisive.
Democracies can’t function
Harsanyi ‘14
Human Events, Why democracy is a bad idea, 3/10/14, David Harsanyi [David Harsanyi is the former editor of Human Events. He
is a syndicated columnists and his work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Weekly Standard, National
Review, Reason, New York Post, and numerous other publications and is the author of “Obama’s Four Horsemen: The Disasters
Unleashed by Obama’s Reelection” (Regnery, 2013) and “Nanny State: How Food Fascists, Teetotaling Do-Gooders, Priggish
Moralists, and other Boneheaded Bureaucrats are Turning America into a Nation of Children” (Doubleday/Broadway, 2007).]
http://humanevents.com/2014/03/10/why-democracy-is-a-bad-idea/
It’s difficult for democracy to function properly under the most favorable circumstances, but it
has no chance at all when millions of voters are divorced from objective reality and incapable of
understanding what is going on in Washington. It is certainly a personal fault and detrimental
for any representative government not to understand the most basic working of the country
you live in. But there’s nothing particularly appalling about failing to comprehend the massively complicated legislation that makes its way
through Congress. Who has the time or attention span? The electorate will never be more interested in tax reform
than it is in Dancing with the Stars or Call of Duty. I don’t think that voters should be fixated on
public policy. In a healthy republic, they wouldn’t have to worry every waking hour about what
their government is doing. The more localized and tightly focused a law is, the more likely
Americans are to understand it. But the problems that the federal government tries to deal
with are now terribly complex, as are the resulting large-scale collective measures that try to
coerce the entire nation into participation (and that no one understands, not even the
congressmen who voted for them). Trying to deal with the anxieties and problems of over 300
million citizens rather than one municipality or state, these laws are often intrusive yet
ineffectual. On average, Washington adds 286 pages every work- day. In one randomly selected week in 2013,
agencies published eighty-four new final rules and added 1,412 new pages. Newton was able to distill the rules of physics within the 974 pages
of his Principia mathematica, and God himself confined his rather detailed code of life to the two hundred pages of the Torah. But the
Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, has produced over eleven thousand pages of
regulations. And we’re only getting started. In a highly centralized and hyper-regulatory government like
ours, no one really knows what is going on. The electorate can’t possibly make informed
choices, and even their elected representatives don’t have the time to understand more than
the basics of most legislation. In the midst of all this ignorance, voters become perilously susceptible to
fearmongering, misinformation, and blind partisan- ship. This isn’t exactly a new state of affairs, but the problem
has become acute
CLOUD ADVANTAGE UPDATES
NSA surveillance shocks entire econ
Espionage causes cascading shocks throughout the tech sector, collapsing US
competitiveness
Pociask 14 (Steve Pociask, president of the American Consumer Institute Center for Citizen Research, a
nonprofit educational and research organization, “Spy in the Clouds: How DOJ Actions Could Harm U.S.
Competitiveness Abroad,” 9/8, The American Consumer Institute Center for Citizen Research,
September 8, 2014, http://www.theamericanconsumer.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/BalkanizedInternet.pdf, CMR)
The Cost of Economic Sanction s The U.S. has 10% of the world’s online users, but only 4.5% of the population. 7 Yet, the
U.S. has nearly
one - third of research and development investment in science and technology. 8 However, its worldwide presence
in technology could be threatened by a backlash of anti-American sentiment, now fueled by the
Microsoft lawsuit and the resulting concerns of privacy and espionage. While the Information Technology and
Innovation Foundation predicted a $35 billion loss in cloud computing from an international backlash from privacy concerns , Forrester
Research estimated the larger high
- tech sector could suffer financial losses as high as $180 billion or about a quarter
of industry revenues. 9 Using the Bureau of Economic Analysis industry multipliers, that loss would be equivalent to losing
more than 2 million U.S. jobs. That would increase the unemployment rate by from 6.1% to 7.6%. These
losses would be devastating for American high - tech businesses and could spill into non - tech commerce
as well. Indeed, losses to U.S. corporations are already starting to surface. Following the NSA spying revelation, there were reports that IBM,
Microsoft, Cisco and other American Companies may have lost customers and were not invited to bid on multi - year international contracts.
The latest threat by t he DOJ to access records on foreign consumers and businesses , particularly if successful in the courts, will certainly fuel
further sanctions. The
shunning of U.S. high - tech products and services by consumers, businesses and
governments will be a major setback for U.S. companies working abroad. Because the U.S. is a world
leader in technological services and products, the effects of complying with the DOJ request would
significantly stunt U.S. sales abroad and encourage foreign countries to buy products and services from
their domestic sources, including developing a balkanized Internet that keeps its citizens, businesses and government away from
buying U.S. products, cloud services, software and applications. This would affect U.S. competitive abroad for decades to
come U.S. Government Needs to Fix This Mess The DOJ’s quest for personal information on a n Irish citizen living abroad
could open up a cascade of problems overseas -- conflicts with laws in other countries, customer losses,
contract sanctions by foreign business and governments, retaliation , and balkanization of the Internet. A
balkanized Internet will not support the rapid growth of high-tech trade and free exchange of ideas that
we have enjoyed over the past 20 years. I t will lead to a substantial financial impact on U.S. high - tech firms and lost jobs for workers . It would
also produce long - term harm to U.S. competitiveness in the high - tech sector. The
quick and easy solution is for the full and
immediate attention of Congress in its consideration of legislation just introduced by Senators Hatch, Coons and Heller – The Law Enforcement
Access to Data Stored Abroad Act . 10 This proposed legislation would address the issue by limiting the reach of
warrant s to U.S. citizens and companies, as well as keeping conformity with foreign treaties and laws.
Congress needs to act before the negative economic consequences of the DOJ’s actions cause
irreparable harm to U.S. interests abroad. The legislative solution makes the U.S. keep its promises and respect its legal treaties
with other countries, and that work s to dispel any fears of spying or collection of personal information that our allies might have . We need to
take steps now to protect U.S. business interests abroad . To
consequences on U.S. high-tech firms.
do otherwise could lead to devastating financial
AT “2008 recession disproves your econ impact”
2008 crisis was resolves by massive expansion of US debt – it cannot do that again.
The next economic crisis will be far worse.
Jim Rogers, Nov 9, 2011, “The world is definitely going to face another financial crisis stemming from
problems in Europe, Jim Rogers said Wednesday,” CNBC, http://www.cnbc.com/id/45219555, KEL
"We're certainly going to have more crises coming out of Europe and America; the world is in trouble.
The world has been spending staggering amounts of money that it doesn't have for a few decades now,
and it's all coming home to roost," Rogers, CEO and chairman Rogers Holdings told CNBC. He added that
the crisis would be much worse than the one markets saw in 2008 because the debt is much higher
now. "Last time, America quadrupled its debt. The system is much more extended now, and America
cannot quadruple its debt again. Greece cannot double its debt again. The next time around is going to
be much worse," Rogers said.
2008 crisis didn’t spiral out of control because it was caused by bad loans that banks
quickly ended. It took us to the brink, but not over.
Mike Patton, Feb 11, 2014, “Why the Next Financial Crisis could be worse than 2008,” Forbes,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikepatton/2014/02/11/why-the-next-financial-crisis-could-be-worsethan-2008/2/, KEL
The 2008 Crisis When the housing bubble burst, banks were so deep in debt that mass failures seemed imminent. In essence, the lubricant
of our economy (i.e.; liquidity), suddenly, and with great severity, dried up and the engine froze. This forced Congress to take
drastic measures. In fact, Ben Bernanke, former fed chairman relied upon an obscure portion of the Federal Reserve Act which allowed him to lend to “any individual,
partnership, or corporation” in “unusual and exigent circumstances.” This was predicated on the fact that “adequate credit accommodations from other banking institutions” was not possible.
Basically, the power of the Fed was greatly expanded that day. When Congress passed the Troubled Asset Relief Program (T.A.R.P.), Washington hoped banks would loan this money to
stimulate economic activity. However, as I wrote at that time, since banks were so mired in debt, they probably wouldn’t use the money for loans, but would use it to mend their wounds. In
since the crisis was largely due to pressure from the U.S. government to make home loans to subprime borrowers, banks were in no mood to go down that path again, at least not so soon. Rather than use more
debt to cure a problem which was caused by debt, banks tightened their lending standards and loan
activity became temporarily extinct. This greatly increased the severity of the crisis. Even though the financial system didn’t
actually collapse, the edge of the cliff could easily be seen from where they stood.
short,
Cyber Security Add-on Extensions
Cyber attack threats high, serious consequences to national defense activities, energy
resources, banking/finance, transportation, and essential daily-life pursuits for billions
of people
Rainie, Anderson and Connolly ‘14
Lee Rainie is the director of internet, science and technology research at the Pew Research Center. He gives several dozen speeches a year to government officials,
media leaders, scholars and students, technology executives, librarians, and non-profit groups about the changing media ecosystem. He is also regularly interviewed
by major news organizations about technology trends. He is a co-author of Networked: The New Social Operating System and five books about the future of the
internet that are drawn from the center’s research. He was also managing editor of U.S. News & World Report. He is a graduate of Harvard University and has a
master’s degree in political science from Long Island University. Janna Anderson is a director at the Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center. Anderson
partnered with the Pew Internet & American Life Project and started conducting surveys to see what people today expect for the future of this new technology. The
project morphed into the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon. So far, their research has shown that the future of the Internet is pervasive, personal, portable and
precarious. Jennifer Connolly is an Assistant Professor of Political Science with a focus in local government and public management. She holds a PhD in Public Policy
and Management from the Price School of Public Policy at USC, “Digital Life in 2025”, Pew Research Center, OCTOBER 29, 2014
The Internet has become so integral to economic and national life that government, business, and
individual users are targets for ever-more frequent and threatening attacks. In the 10 years since the Pew Research Center and Elon
University’s Imagining the Internet Center first asked experts about the future of cyber attacks in 2004 a lot has happened: Some suspect the Russian government of
attacking or encouraging organized crime assaults on official websites in the nation of Georgia during
military struggles in 2008 that resulted in a Russian invasion of Georgia. In 2009-2010, suspicions arose
that a sophisticated government-created computer worm called “Stuxnet” was loosed in order to
disable Iranian nuclear plant centrifuges that could be used for making weapons-grade enriched
uranium. Unnamed sources and speculators argued that the governments of the United States and
Israel might have designed and spread the worm. The American Defense Department has created a Cyber Command structure that builds Internet-enabled defensive and
offensive cyber strategies as an integral part of war planning and war making. In May, five Chinese military officials were indicted in Western
Pennsylvania for computer hacking, espionage and other offenses that were aimed at six US victims,
including nuclear power plants, metals and solar products industries. The indictment comes after several
years of revelations that Chinese military and other agents have broken into computers at major US
corporations and media companies in a bid to steal trade secrets and learn what stories journalists were
working on. In October, Russian hackers were purportedly discovered to be exploiting a flaw in Microsoft
Windows to spy on NATO, the Ukrainian government, and Western businesses. The respected Ponemon Institute reported in
September that 43% of firms in the United States had experienced a data breach in the past year. Retail breaches, in particular, had
grown in size in virulence in the previous year. One of the most chilling breaches was discovered in July at JPMorgan Chase & Co.,
where information from 76 million households and 7 million small businesses was compromised. Obama
Administration officials have wondered if the breach was in retaliation by the Putin regime in Russia over events in Ukraine. Among the types of exploits of individuals in evidence today are stolen national ID numbers, pilfered
passwords and payment information, erased online identities, espionage tools that record all online conversations and keystrokes, and even hacks of driverless cars. Days before this report was published, Apple’s iCloud cloudbased data storage system was the target of a so-called “man-in-the-middle” attack in China that was aimed at stealing users’ passwords and spying on their account activities. Some activists and security experts said they
suspected the Chinese government had mounted the attack, perhaps because the iPhone 6 had just become available in the country. Others thought the attack was not sophisticated enough to have been government-initiated. The
threat of cyber attacks on government agencies, businesses, non-profits, and individual users is so pervasive and worrisome that this month (October 2014) is National Cyber Security Awareness Month. To explore the future of
cyber attacks we canvassed thousands of experts and Internet builders to share their predictions. We call this a canvassing because it is not a representative, randomized survey. Its findings emerge from an “opt in” invitation to
experts, many of whom play active roles in Internet evolution as technology builders, researchers, managers, policymakers, marketers, and analysts. We also invited comments from those who have made insightful predictions to
By 2025,
will a major cyber attack have caused widespread harm to a nation’s security and capacity to defend
itself and its people? (By “widespread harm,” we mean significant loss of life or property losses/damage/theft at the levels of tens of billions of dollars.) Please elaborate on your answer. (Begin with your
our previous queries about the future of the Internet. (For more details, please see the section “About this Canvassing.”) Overall, 1,642 respondents weighed in on the following question: Major cyber attacks:
name if you are willing to have your comments attributed to you.) Explain what vulnerabilities nations have to their sovereignty in the coming decade and whether major economic enterprises can or cannot thwart determined
opponents. Or explain why you think the level of threat has been hyped and/or why you believe attacks can be successfully thwarted. Some 61% of these respondents said “yes” that a major attack causing widespread harm would
there will be major cyber attacks causing widespread harm Internet-connected
systems are inviting targets. The Internet is a critical infrastructure for national defense activities, energy
resources, banking/finance, transportation, and essential daily-life pursuits for billions of people. The tools
occur by 2025 and 39% said “no.” Key themes: Yes,
already exist to mount cyber attacks now and they will improve in coming years—but countermeasures will improve, too. Security is generally not the first concern in the design of Internet applications. It seems as if the world will
only wake up to these vulnerabilities after catastrophe occurs
. Major cyber attacks have already happened, for instance the Stuxnet worm and attacks in nations where mass opposition to a regime has taken to the streets. Similar
attacks are a looming challenge for businesses and individuals. Certain sectors, such as
finance and power systems, are the most vulnerable. There are noteworthy divides between the prepared and the unprepared. Key themes: No, there will not be
or worse attacks are a given. Cyber
major cyber attacks There is steady progress in security fixes. Despite the Internet’s vulnerabilities, a distributed network structure will help thwart the worst attacks. Security standards will be upgraded. The good guys will still be
winning the cyber security arms race by 2025. Deterrence works, the threat of retaliation will keep bad actors in check, and some bad actors are satisfied with making only small dents in the system so they can keep mining a
preferred vulnerability and not have it closed off. Hype over cyber attacks is an exaggeration of real dangers fostered by the individuals and organizations that will gain the most from creating an atmosphere of fear. There was little
disagreement that the spread and importance of the Internet in the lives of people, businesses, and government agencies exposes them all to new dangers. As Jay Cross, the chief scientist at Internet Time Group, summarized his
“yes” answer: “Connectedness begets vulnerability.” Or, as Joel Brenner, the former counsel to the National Security Agency explained in the Washington Post this past weekend: “The Internet was not built for security, yet we
have made it the backbone of virtually all private-sector and government operations, as well as communications. Pervasive connectivity has brought dramatic gains in productivity and pleasure but has created equally dramatic
vulnerabilities. Huge heists of personal information are common, and cybertheft of intellectual property and infrastructure penetrations continue at a frightening pace.” There was considerable agreement among the experts in this
canvassing that individuals—their accounts and their identities—will be more vulnerable to cyber attacks from bad actors in the future and that businesses will be persistently under attack. Many said the most vulnerable targets
include essential utilities. Many also believe that theft at a larger scale than is now being experienced and economic disruptions could be likely. The experts had varying opinions about the likely extent of damage and disruption
possible at the nation-state level. Many argued that cyber attacks between nations have already occurred, often citing as an example the spread of the Stuxnet worm. The respondents also invoked the Cold War as a metaphor as
they anticipated the world to come. They argued that the cyber deterrence of mutually assured disruption or destruction would likely keep competing powers from being too aggressive against other nation-states. At the same
time, they also anticipate the current cyber arms race dynamic will expand as nations and other groups and individuals ceaselessly work to overcome security measures through the design of potent exploits. Some expect that
opponents of the political status quo in many regions of the world will work to implement cyber attacks against governments or other entrenched institutions. One “yes” respondent, Dave Kissoondoyal, CEO for KMP Global Ltd.,
put it this way: “I would not say that a major cyber attack will have caused widespread harm to a nation’s security and capacity to defend itself and its people, but the risks will be there. By 2025, there will be widespread use of
cyber terrorism and countries will spend a lot of money on cyber security.” Some observed that the Internet’s expansion will multiply vulnerabilities of all types, even inside one’s home. Tim Kambitsch, an activist Internet user,
The Internet of Things is just emerging. In the future, control of physical assets, not just
information, will be open to cyber attack.” Some respondents who know the technology world well, but are not privy to insider knowledge about cyber threats, expressed
wrote, “
uncertainty about the state of things and whether the disaster scenarios that are commonly discussed are hyped or not. The vice president of research and consumer media for a research and analysis firm observed, “There are
serious problems, but it’s not clear that those who are directing the hype are focused on the correct problems or solutions. So, the problem is both serious and over-hyped.” Security-oriented experts expressed concerns. Jeremy
Epstein, a senior computer scientist at SRI International, said, “Damages in the billions will occur to manufacturing and/or utilities but because it ramps up slowly, it will be accepted as just another cost (probably passed on to
taxpayers through government rebuilding subsidies and/or environmental damage), and there will be little motivation for the private sector to defend itself.
Due to political gridlock and
bureaucratic inertia, the government will be unable to defend itself, even if it knows how. The issue is not primarily one of technical capability
(although we’re sorely lacking in that department). The primary issue is a lack of policy/political/economic incentives and willpower to address the problem.” These are among a number of broad themes threaded through the
experts’ written elaborations in response to this many-layered issue. This report begins with a summary of key comments in three sections: first, remarks from those that expect a major cyber attack by 2025; second, a summary of
the comments of those who disagree; and third, elaborations that go beyond the boundary of the specific question. Following this initial 25-page summary of the findings, we include three more sections with additional insightful
observations segmented in identical fashion. Themes among those who expect ‘yes,’ there will be major cyber attacks ‘Yes’ respondents theme 1) Internet-connected systems are inviting targets. The Internet is a critical
infrastructure for national defense activities, energy resources, banking/finance, transportation, and essential daily-life pursuits for billions of people. The tools already exist to mount cyber attacks now and they will improve in
Cyber attacks will
become a pillar of warfare and terrorism between now and 2025. So much of a country’s
infrastructure—commerce, finance, energy, education, health care—will be online, and gaining
control of or disrupting a country’s online systems will become a critical goal in future conflicts.” Mark Nall, a
program manager for NASA, responded, “Current threats include economic transactions, power grid, and air traffic control.
This will expand to include others such as self-driving cars, unmanned aerial vehicles, and building
infrastructure. In addition to current methods for thwarting opponents, growing use of strong artificial
intelligence to monitor and diagnose itself, and other systems will help as well.”
coming years—but countermeasures will evolve, too. Joe Kochan, chief operating officer for US Ignite, a company developing gigabit-ready digital experiences and applications, wrote, “
Cyber warfare probable, countries are capable
Rainie, Anderson and Connolly ‘14
Lee Rainie is the director of internet, science and technology research at the Pew Research Center. He gives several dozen speeches a year to government officials,
media leaders, scholars and students, technology executives, librarians, and non-profit groups about the changing media ecosystem. He is also regularly interviewed
by major news organizations about technology trends. He is a co-author of Networked: The New Social Operating System and five books about the future of the
internet that are drawn from the center’s research. He was also managing editor of U.S. News & World Report. He is a graduate of Harvard University and has a
master’s degree in political science from Long Island University. Janna Anderson is a director at the Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center. Anderson
partnered with the Pew Internet & American Life Project and started conducting surveys to see what people today expect for the future of this new technology. The
project morphed into the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon. So far, their research has shown that the future of the Internet is pervasive, personal, portable and
precarious. Jennifer Connolly is an Assistant Professor of Political Science with a focus in local government and public management. She holds a PhD in Public Policy
and Management from the Price School of Public Policy at USC, “Digital Life in 2025”, Pew Research Center, OCTOBER 29, 2014
Doc Searls, director of ProjectVRM at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, wrote at length on this issue: “I imagine that Iran would already claim that it has suffered harm through the (alleged but 25 PEW RESEARCH CENTER www.pewresearch.org widely
No doubt other forms of cyber warfare are ready for deployment by the
U.S., Russia, China and other countries. Since what can be done will be done
it is reasonable to
expect harm in $billions
to
countries. On the other hand, the whole world is now one
big system, and it will be very hard to contain the effects of a cyber attack, as we discovered
(predictably) with Stuxnet
acknowledged) Stuxnet attack by the US and Israel on Iranian nuclear facilities.
, sooner or later,
(at current valuation)—
some country, or number of
. Two questions need to be asked: 1) Who in a country is most capable of cyber-warfare? Is it the government or the hackers? 2) Is it in the national interest of a country to attack another with which it enjoys a high
degree of business and other dealings? In business today, many old enemies are now close friends, at least in business. In Russia today the concentration of techno-experts making money through botnets off of the (mostly U.S.-based) $many-billion advertising industry is very high. Is
there a higher concentration of experts inside the Russian government? Almost certainly not, given the billions being made in Russia’s clandestine botnet business. My point here is that actors in the private sector, especially the bad-guy ones, may have stronger cyber warfare skills than
their own governments. And they are already doing damage in the form of many billions of dollars siphoned off the flow of advertising money through Google and other companies. What happens when the online advertising business, which has many characteristics of mania and bubble,
starts to fail? If one doubts that failure will happen, consider this: more than 61% of traffic on the Net already isn’t human, and a third of that number is busy impersonating human traffic, no doubt for fraudulent purposes. Also, according to Michael Tiffany of White Ops, ‘at least 15
Both cryptography and cracking it continue to get more
sophisticated. Those who are good at it won’t stop. all countries capable of cyber warfare—China, the
US, Russia, India, the UK, Israel and so on are not going to stop
doing everything they can to stay
percent of American broadband households are participating in a botnet right now.’ And the numbers are going up. “
And
—
the
preparing for it and
ahead of both their friends and their enemies, real and perceived. This constitutes a cold war
Spy agencies will do what they were created to do. They have always been, by nature and charter,
outside the laws of both their own countries and those they spy on
cyber crime
effects on the whole Internet
of sorts. Likewise, spying also
won’t end.
. So we have this broad class of things we know—notably the level of
happening constantly, and its
—and a narrow class of things we don’t, which is what the spy agencies know but won’t say. (Yes, Snowdens come along from time to time, but the spying will continue.) To sum
up, I believe we can safely predict that cyber crime will be one of the daggers that burst the online advertising bubble, the collapse of which will cause harm to some industries (e.g., online publishing). But all bets are off for what will happen in cyber warfare. The one clear thing is that
national boundaries and interests are far more blurred than they ever were when wars happened in the physical world alone.”
The electric grid is facing cyber attacks
Bedard ’15
Paul Bedard is a longtime D.C. reporter, “Electric grid under attack, feds try to 'stay ahead of the bad
guys'”, April 27, 2015
the secretary of Energy today confirmed that the vast U.S. electric grid is
being hit with an increasing number of cyberattacks from a growing number of enemies. "The energy infrastructure is
Without specifically blaming Iran or other U.S. foes,
a major target of cyber attacks. That is increasing in frequency and perhaps source," said Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. His comments at a media roundtable hosted by the Christian Science
Monitor follow a department report last week that warned "modern life" would be threatened if the grid went down. He said that the job is staying ahead of the attacks. Iran and North Korea
have been cited by officials as the leaders in
targeting the U.S. electric grid, but Moniz wouldn't name names. "You've just got to stay ahead of the bad guys all the
time. So far we have not had any major actual disruption of our energy infrastructure, but it ain't for a lack of people trying," he said. Moniz said the grid also faces threats from storms he said
are caused by climate change, physical attacks and electromagnetic pulse. Asked specifically
about a cyberattack, he said, "We certainly identify it as
one of the major risks; extreme weather, cyber. By the way physical attacks we've seen on the grid and it's obviously a widely distributed and therefore
somewhat exposed system." The department has established a special panel to watch for cyberattacks, and used some of the president's stimulus money to add special sensors that can detect
when the system is teetering. He also is promoting a public-private plan to build a surplus of electric transformers to be used if those currently in use are attacked and dismantled.
AT Executive Order CP
AT Prez Flex Bad
Terrorism doesn’t require rapid decision-making
Holmes, 9 - Walter E. Meyer Professor of Law, New York University School of Law (Stephen, 97 Calif. L. Rev. 301, “In Case of Emergency:
Misunderstanding Tradeoffs in the War on Terror”, lexis)
[*310] Emergency-room emergencies are urgent even when they are perfectly familiar. Terrorists
with access to weapons of mass
not an
"emergency" in the sense of a sudden event, such as a house on fire, requiring genuinely split-second
decision making, with no opportunity for serious consultation or debate. n20 Managing the risks of nuclear terrorism
destruction ("WMD"), by contrast, present a novel threat that is destined to endure for decades, if not longer. Such a threat is
requires sustained policies , not short-term measures . This is feasible precisely because, in such an
enduring crisis, national-security personnel have ample time to think and rethink, to plan ahead and
revise their plans. In depicting today's terrorist threat as "an emergency," executive-discretion
advocates almost always blur together urgency and novelty. This is a consequential intellectual fallacy.
But it also provides an opportunity for critics of executive discretion in times of crisis. If classical emergencies, in the house-on-fire or
emergency-room sense, turn out to invite and require rule-governed responses, then the justification for dispensing with rules in the war on
terror seems that much more tenuous and open to question.
No impact to speed of decisions
Zelizer ’11, Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of "Jimmy Carter,"
published by Times Books, and editor of a book assessing former President George W. Bush's administration, published by Princeton University
Press. June 27, 2011, CNN, War powers belong to Congress and the president,
http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/06/27/zelizer.war.powers/index.html, jj
The second cost of presidents going to war rather than Congress doing so is that major mistakes result
when decisions are made so quickly. When there is not an immediate national security risk involved, the
slowness of the legislative process does offer an opportunity to force policymakers to prove their case
before going to war.¶ Speed is not always a virtue. In the case of Iraq, the president started the war
based on the shoddiest of evidence about WMD. The result was an embarrassment for the nation, an
operation that undermined U.S. credibility abroad.¶ Even in military actions that have stronger
justifications, there are downsides to speed. With President Obama and the surge in Afghanistan, there is
considerable evidence that the administration went in without a clear strategy and without a clear
objective. With Libya, there are major concerns about what the administration hopes to accomplish and
whether we are supporting rebel forces that might be connected with terrorist networks intent on
harming the U.S.
Restrictions inevitable---the aff prevents haphazard ones which are worse
Benjamin Wittes 9, senior fellow and research director in public law at the Brookings Institution, is the
author of Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror and is also a member of the
Hoover Institution's Task Force on National Security and Law, “Legislating the War on Terror: An Agenda
for Reform”, November 3, Book, p. 17
A new administration now confronts the same hard problems that plagued its ideologically opposite
predecessor, and its very efforts to turn the page on the past make acute the problems of institutionalization. For while the new
administration can promise to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and can talk about its desire to prosecute suspects criminally, for
example, it cannot so easily forswear noncriminal detention. While it can eschew the term "global war on terror," it cannot forswear those uses
of force—Predator strikes, for example—that law enforcement powers would never countenance. Nor is it hastening to give back the
surveillance powers that Congress finally gave the Bush administration. In other words, its
very efforts to avoid the Bush
administrations vocabulary have only emphasized the conflicts hybrid nature—indeed- emphasized
that the United States is building something new here, not merely applying something old.¶ That point should not provoke
controversy. The
evidence that the U nited S tates is fumbling toward the creation of hybrid institutions
to handle terrorism cases is everywhere around us. U.S. law, for example, now contemplates extensiveprobing judicial review of detentions under the laws of war—a naked marriage of criminal justice and wartime traditions. It
also contemplates warrantless wiretapping with judicial oversight of surveillance targeting procedures—thereby
mingling the traditional judicial role in reviewing domestic surveillance with the vacuum cleaner-type acquisition
of intelligence typical of overseas intelligence gathering. Slowly
but surely, through an unpredictable combination of
litigation, legislation, and evolutionary developments within executive branch policy, the nation is
creating novel institutional arrangements to authorize and regulate the war on terror . The real
question is not whether institutionalization will take place but whether it will take place deliberately
or haphazardly , whether the U nited S tates will create through legislation the institutions with which it
wishes to govern itself or whether it will allow an endless sequence of common law adjudications to
shape them.¶ The authors of the chapters in this book disagree about a great many things. They span a considerable swath of the U.S.
political spectrum, and they would no doubt object to some of one another's policy prescriptions. Indeed, some of the proposals are arguably
inconsistent with one another, and it will be the very rare reader who reads this entire volume and wishes to see all of its ideas implemented in
legislation. What
binds these authors together is not the programmatic aspects of their policy prescriptions but the belief
in the value of legislative action to help shape the contours of the continuing U.S. confrontation with
terrorism . That is, the authors all believe that Congress has a significant role to play in the process of
institutionalization —and they have all attempted to describe that role with reference to one of the
policy areas over which Americans have sparred these past several years and will likely continue
sparring over the next several years.
Imperial Presidency Bad
US NEWS 2014 [US NEWS; U.S. News & World Report is a multi-platform publisher of news and information. In 2012 U.S. News
launched a conference division focusing on important national. U.S. News has earned a reputation as the leading provider of service news and
on news and opinion; US NEWS; “About U.S. News & World Report”; March 21, 2014; http://www.usnews.com/debate-club/is-presidentobama-abusing-executive-power/; July 14, 2015; MG]
The House last week adopted a bill that, as the Associated Press put it, "would expedite
congressional lawsuits against the chief executive for failure to enforce federal laws." The measure
was approved by a vote of 233 to 181, with every voting Republican, as well as five Democrats, voting in favor. The bill was spurred
by what Republicans see as an abuse of executive power by the Obama administration. They
cite executive changes to the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, as well as executive
orders regarding immigration and the environment. Republicans are also displeased with the
administration for failing to fully enforce federal laws on sentencing and the federal ban on gay
marriage. “The Constitution gives Congress the responsibility to write the laws and the executive
to enforce them," said Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., the bill's sponsor. "We don’t pass suggestions. We don’t pass
ideas. We pass laws." House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., added: "The president's dangerous search for
expanded powers appears to be endless." President Obama, in his most recent State of the Union address,
explicitly said that he would respond to Congressional obstruction by finding measures that could
be implemented in the absence of congressional action. "America does not stand still – and neither will I. So
wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation to expand opportunity for more
American families, that’s what I’m going to do," Obama said. Congressional Democrats have defended
the president's approach, saying that Republicans want a "do-nothing president," in addition to a
"do-nothing Congress." Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said that the House bill is "dead on arrival" in the
Democratically controlled Senate. Scholars, meanwhile, have split on whether the president is overreaching in terms of
executive authority." Obama’s assertion of unilateral executive authority is just routine stuff. He follows in the footsteps of his predecessors on
a path set out by Congress. And well should he. If you want a functioning government — one that protects citizens from criminals, terrorists,
the climatic effects of greenhouse gas emissions, poor health, financial manias, and the like — then you want a government led by the
president," wrote University of Chicago Law School Professor Eric Posner. But Michael McConnell, a former federal judge who is now a
professor of law and director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School disagrees, writing, "While
the president does
have substantial discretion about how to enforce a law, he has no discretion about whether to
do so. ... Of all the stretches of executive power Americans have seen in the past few years, the
president's unilateral suspension of statutes may have the most disturbing long-term effects."
Cruz 2014 [Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz; Is the junior United States Senator from Texas. He is the chairman of the subcommittee on the
Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights and Federal Courts, U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. Cruz was the director of the Office of Policy
Planning at the Federal Trade Commission, an associate deputy attorney general at the United States Department of Justice, and as domestic
policy advisor to U.S. President George W. Bush on the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign. He taught U.S. Supreme Court litigation; The Wall Street
Journal; “Ted Cruz: The Imperial Presidency of Barack Obama”; January 28, 2014;
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304632204579338793559838308/; July 14, 2015; MG]
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
an ObamaCare 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.
Douthat 2014 [Ross Douthat; Ross Douthat joined The New York Times as an Op-Ed columnist in April 2009. His column appears every
Sunday. Previously, he was a senior editor at The Atlantic and a blogger for theatlantic.com. Author of “Grand New Party: How Republicans Can
Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream” (2008); The New York Times; “The Making of an Imperial President”; November. 22,
2014; http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/23/opinion/sunday/ross-douthat-the-making-of-an-imperial-president.html?_r=0/; July 14, 2105;
MG]
LET me be clear, as he likes to say: I believe that President
Obama was entirely sincere when he ran for president as a fierce critic of
supporters in 2008 that America’s “biggest
problems” involved “George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive
branch and not go through Congress at all.” I believe he meant it when he cast himself as a principled civil libertarian,
the imperial executive. I believe that he was in earnest when he told
when he pledged to defer to Congress on war powers, when he promised to abjure privileges Bush had claimed. I also believe he was sincere
when he told audiences, again and again across his presidency, that a sweeping unilateral move like the one just made on immigration would
betray the norms of constitutional government. So how did we get from there to here? How
did the man who was supposed
to tame the imperial presidency become, in certain ways, more imperial than his predecessor?
Ross Douthat Politics, religion, moral values and higher education. Gay Conservatism and Straight Liberation JUN 26 Pope Francis’ Call to Action
Goes Beyond the Environment JUN 20 The Dannemora Dilemma JUN 13 Running Against Hillary JUN 6 The Prospects for Polygamy MAY 30 See
More » The scope of Obama’s moves can be debated, but that basic imperial reality is clear. Even
as he has maintained much
of the Bush-era national security architecture, this president has been more willing to launch
military operations without congressional approval; more willing to trade in assassination and
deal death even to American citizens; and more aggressive in his war on leakers, whistleblowers and journalists. At the same time, he has been much more aggressive than Bush in his
use of executive power to pursue major domestic policy goals — on education, climate change,
health care and now most sweepingly on immigration. Three forces — two external, one
internal — might help explain how this transformation happened. First, public expectations.
Across the last century, the presidency’s powers have increased in a symbiosis with changing public expectations about the office. Because
Congress is unsexy, frustrating and hard to follow, mass
democracy seems to demand a single iconic figure into
whom desires and aspirations and hatreds can be poured . And so the modern president, the Cato Institute’s Gene
Healy has written, is increasingly seen as “a soul nourisher, a hope giver, a living American talisman against hurricanes, terrorism, economic
downturns and spiritual malaise.” And
pressure on this talisman to act, even in violation of laws or norms or
Burkean traditions, is ever increasing and intense. When presidents aren’t seen as “doing something,” they’re castigated as lame
ducks; when they take unilateral action, as we’ve seen in the last week of media coverage, they suddenly seem to get their groove back. And
that’s something that even a principled critic of executive power can find ever harder to pass up. Second,
congressional
abdication. This is the point that liberals raise, and plausibly, in President Obama’s defense: It
isn’t just that he’s been dealing with an opposition party that’s swung to the right; it’s that this
opposition doesn’t know its own mind, collectively or sometimes even individually, and so has
trouble bargaining or legislating effectively. This reality has made it harder to cut major
bipartisan deals; it’s made it harder to solve problems that crop up within existing law; it’s made it
harder for the president to count votes on foreign policy. All of which creates more incentives for presidential
unilateralism: In some cases, it seems required to keep the wheels turning; in others, it can be justified as the only way to get the Big
Things done. From his own imperialistic. Don't understand why governmental inaction is seen as a deficiency. Had our government been on
vacation for the past 60 years, our people Such a deeply cynical pile of rubbish. Which
bring us to the third factor in the
president’s transformation: his own ambitions. While running for president, Obama famously
praised Ronald Reagan for changing “the trajectory of America” in a way that Bill Clinton’s
triangulation did not. And it’s his self-image as the liberal Reagan, I suspect, that’s made it
psychologically impossible for this president to accept the limits that his two predecessors
eventually accepted on their own policy-making ability. That transformative self-image has shaped his presidency
from the beginning: Obama never really looked for domestic issues where he might be willing to do a version of something the other party
wanted — as Bush did with education spending and Medicare Part D, and Clinton did with welfare reform. (He’s had a self-admiring willingness
to incorporate conservative ideas into essentially liberal proposals, but that’s not really the same thing.) But the liberal Reagan idea has shaped
his choices more as it’s become clear that certain major liberal priorities — a big climate-change bill, a comprehensive amnesty — are as out of
legislative reach as health care reform proved for Clinton and Social Security reform for Bush. Confronted with those realities, Clinton
pivoted and Bush basically gave up. But Obama can’t accept either option, because both seem
like betrayals of his promise, his destiny, his image of himself. And so he has chosen to betray
himself in a different way, by becoming the very thing that he once campaigned against: an
elected Caesar, a Cheney for liberalism, a president unbound.