Estimated read time: 5-6 minutes
- Uses of executive orders have grown, impacting policy and increasing political polarization, experts say.
- The Cato Institute's Alex Nowrasteh argues executive powers bypass Congress, causing policy instability.
- Concerns include health care costs, tariffs, and government efficiency under President-elect Donald Trump's potential orders.
SALT LAKE CITY — Amid Joe Biden's executive order to ban offshore drilling and President-elect Donald Trump's claim he will reverse it on his first day in office, experts at the Cato Institute discussed executive orders and their effect on policy, polarization and tariffs.
Alex Nowrasteh, vice president for economic and social policy studies at Cato, a libertarian think tank, said at a forum on Thursday that executive powers have usurped Congress' legislative authority.
Since 1907, executive orders and executive proclamations must be published in the federal register, and the counted number includes 14,133 executive orders and 10,074 executive proclamations. However, executive orders were around long before the beginning of the 20th century, so the total count is unknown, Nowrasteh said.
He explained, "Some are totally appropriate and some are positive — including the emancipation proclamation — but some are completely inappropriate," referencing President Franklin D. Roosevelt's order for Japanese internment in WWII.
"It's grown beyond what our original fathers wanted," Nowrasteh said, noting how executive actions have little oversight and are not required to reference legal authority.
As an example, Nowrasteh quoted former President Barack Obama's justification for 19 orders which stated, "By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America ... ."
Executive orders increase political polarization and cause policy chaos
Executive orders can lead to policy whiplash, as major policies change every four to eight years, which create a difficult and unpredictable environment for insurance companies, contractors and Americans as a whole, Nowrasteh said.
"We will see yet another blizzard of chaos in just 11 days when Trump takes office again," he said. "I frankly am getting sick of this chaos. I think Americans are getting sick of it, and if you run businesses in this country … I think you're sick of it as well. I think it's high time we put this activity back in its constitutional box."
Travis Fisher, director of energy and environmental policy studies, echoed this sentiment, explaining that every Week 1 Biden issue will be a Week 1 Trump issue. He also expressed concern that Trump will go further than Biden did and declare a state of emergency to enact new, more powerful executive orders.
Nowrasteh added, "We certainly don't want the president to mandate the construction of new power plants."
Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies, described these executive orders as "policy ping-pong" and said, "That does highlight one of the problems with policymaking by executive order, which is you just get this regulatory ping-pong where for four years you can buy a health insurance plan where you won't get thrown out of it after you get sick, and for the next four years, you're subject to those regulations again."
Chris Edwards, the Kilts Family Chair in Fiscal Studies, touched on Cannon's ping-pong idea, adding, "There is this radical swinging of back and forth, and that seems like it's going to continue to no end because the two parties seem to be permanently off in their two corners."
Some Trump administration executive orders are helpful for health care, efficiency
Cannon highlighted the problem of overpriced health care in the U.S. and pointed at the federal government as the source of the issue. "We spend about two times as much as other OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) nations on medical care," he said. "The federal government and federal health spending is a major factor behind that discrepancy."
During his first term in office, Trump approved executive orders that matched Medicare price for prescription drugs to the price other countries pay. Cannon was hopeful that the incoming Trump administration would try to reinvigorate this executive order.
Cannon also noted Trump's added consumer protections to so-called short-term, limited-duration plans, which he believed were also helpful to Americans.
However, Cannon explained, "Executive orders are not going to fix what's ailing in health care."
"What we need is congressional action to reform, to cut federal health spending, eliminate federal health regulations and drastically reform taxes," he said.
Regarding government efficiency, Edwards said federal workers are fired at one-sixth of the rate people in the private sector are, calling for reforms that would ease worker removal. He added that federal workers themselves think it's too difficult to deal with bad workers.
In 2018, Trump issued Executive Order 13839, which streamlined the firing of federal workers. He also referenced Trump's Executive Order 13957, which removed civil service protections from senior policy positions, making it easier for incoming presidents to hire and fire certain positions related to public policy.
Biden revoked both of these executive orders once he came into office, but Edwards believes Trump is likely to reissue them and also repeal collective bargaining in the federal government.
Executive orders regarding tariffs are 'virtually unlimited'
A member of the audience asked how Trump could use executive orders to impose tariffs.
Nowrasteh pulled out a copy of the U.S. Constitution and answered, "The power of the president to raise the prices and costs for Americans through executive orders and executive actions are virtually unlimited."
Travis Fisher said he believes several of Trump's executive orders involving tariffs have had a negative impact on Americans.
He referenced Executive Order 13920, which restricted the import of transformers from China. "Unfortunately, we do get a lot of transformers from China," he said. "And there's a parallel here with the tariffs that would be in effect against Mexico, because we also get a lot of transformers from Mexico."
In the past, when Trump has viewed an imported good as a security threat, he has imposed tariffs against that good to lower import. "That's the kind of executive action that I'd be concerned about," Fisher said.
