New York Times Sours On Obama Executive Amnesty

New York Times Sours On Obama Executive Amnesty

on Mon, 18 Aug 2014

A new New York Times story detailing President Obama's overtures to the powerful business lobby ahead of planned executive actions on immigration is strikingly negative and suggests the plan continues to lose currency with the liberal intelligentsia in Washington.

The story, by reporter Julie Hirschfeld Davis, focuses on how the president is negotiating secretly despite “claims to be the most transparent in United States history.”

“The process of drafting what will likely be the only significant immigration changes of his presidency — and his most consequential use of executive power — has been conducted almost entirely behind closed doors, where lobbyists and interest groups invited to the White House are making their case out of public view,” the story says.

“Cecilia Muñoz, Mr. Obama’s top immigration adviser and the domestic policy chief, has led meetings attended by White House political aides and lawyers to hear from interest groups, individual companies and business groups about what executive actions they believe the president should take on immigration,” the Timesreports.

The story also quotes a noted expert on executive action puncturing the president's favored talking point on behalf of his executive actions, that he has issued fewer executive orders in number than some previous presidents.

“'He’s using just a vast array of different means to pursue his various goals,' John T. Woolley, a politics professor at the university who maintains the executive order database and studies presidential use of unilateral action,” the story says.

Obama has been “quite aggressive and he’s been creative in looking for every possible avenue to take matters into his own hands,” Woolley added.