Clinton’s Last-Minute Executive Orders Broke Law

Clinton’s Last-Minute Executive Orders Broke Law

NewsMax.com
Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2001

In the final weeks of his presidency, former president Clinton issued a spate of executive orders (EOs) that a top conservative think tank tells President Bush are either illegal, improper or just plain political documents, and that many should be junked.

In a lengthy legal memorandum submitted to the White House and obtained by the Washington Times, Heritage Foundation expert Todd F. Gaziano wrote that the former president used executive orders "in situations where he failed to achieve a legislative objective. Moreover, he repeatedly flaunted his executive order power to curry favor with narrow or partisan special interests."

In scathing terms Gaziano charged that Clinton’s EOs revealed that "a disproportionate number of these executive directives were either illegal or issued in the furtherance of an improper policy or political objective …

"A president who abuses his executive order authority undermines the constitutional separation of powers and may even violate it," Gaziano wrote.

"History will show that President Clinton abused his authority in a variety of ways and that his disrespect for the rule of law was unprecedented. Given this pattern, no one should be surprised that Clinton sometimes abused his executive authority as well," the memo said.

Gaziano noted that many of Clinton’s abuses in his use of EOs occurred under the Antiquities Act of 1906. Under this act, Clinton created seven national monuments comprising a mind-boggling million acres of land with the stroke of his pen.

According to the Times, among the EOs and presidential directives that drew fire from the Heritage memo are the following:

One of the most extensive was signed on Dec. 4. It created the largest protected area in the United States, covering an 84-million-acre ecosystem around Hawaii that will be off-limits to oil exploration and will limit commercial fishing.

In another wide-ranging executive action taken just 11 days before Clinton’s term of office ended, the Environmental Protection Agency approved regulations to protect tens of thousands of acres of wetlands, marshes, swamps and bogs.

One of the most "outrageous" orders Clinton signed under the Antiquities Act was the establishment of the 1.7-million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah, the memo charged. Clinton's order created this landmark area "with insufficient public participation and arguably without adequate due process," Gaziano said.

"Although the number of illegal executive orders issued by Clinton does not constitute a large percentage of his total 364, the pattern of illegal orders, often without any claim of statutory or constitutional authority, was still striking," he said.

The memo said the "clearest example of Clinton's lawlessness" was when he signed his " 'striker replacement' executive order" in 1993 after Congress refused to change labor law to prohibit businesses from permanently replacing workers who were on strike. That order was eventually overturned by the courts.

Gaziano concluded that President Bush has the authority to "rescind any prior designation under the Antiquities Act.

"Each of the executive orders should be carefully reviewed to determine whether the current administration should: (1) allow it to continue; (2) revoke it with a new directive; (3) revise, supplement, or otherwise amend it; or (4) redirect agency implementation through a presidential memorandum or other action," the memo advised.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Bush Administration
Clinton Scandals

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