Donald Trump and Executive Orders
Michael C. Bender writes at Bloomberg:
Donald Trump may be one of Barack Obama's toughest critics, but when it comes to the president's use of executive orders to circumvent Congress, the Republican sees him as a role model.
Trump has already promised to be as aggressive as Obama on executive orders on a wide range of issues. Early in his campaign, for instance, he vowed to use the power of the pen to give all cop killers the death penalty. More recently, in his response to the shooting death of 49 people inside an Orlando gay club this month, he pledged to use executive power to implement one of his signature proposals: A temporary ban on Muslim immigration (even though the shooter was born in New York).
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In addition to the Muslim ban, here are other policies Trump has proposed that he could accomplish without help from Congress:
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• Tighten regulations on money-transfer companies: The cornerstone of Trump's candidacy has been a promise to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. While Congress approves spending for construction projects, Trump says he can force Mexico to pay for it by taking control of an estimated $26 billion that is wired to Mexico from the U.S. every year.
Trump has said he would halt these remittances “on day one” by rewriting banking rules to expand the federal regulations on companies like Western Union and PayPal. He'd then add a new rule to block undocumented immigrants from wiring money outside the borders.
Trump’s administration would have the authority to write these rules, said Peter Wallison, former White House counsel in the Reagan administration. But Wallison and others—including Republicans and Democrats—questioned the practicality of implementing such a plan. “The notion that we’re going to track every Western Union bit of money that’s being sent to Mexico, you know, good luck with that,” Obama said after Trump unveiled his proposal in April.
