On Nov. 22 Saturday Night Live broadcast a satiric Obama-era update to the School House Rock video “I’m Just a Bill,” ridiculing the president’s executive order pretending to change the status of five million immigrants with a stroke of the pen.
In the SNL live open, Obama (played by Jay Pharoah) pushes “Bill” (Kenan Thompson) down the Capitol Hill steps and announces, “There’s actually an easier way to get things done around here. It’s called an executive order.” The boy with the red and white striped shirt (Kyle Mooney) then asks the Executive Order (Bobby Moynihan):
Boy: Wait a second, don’t you still have to go through Congress at some point?
Executive Order: Oh, that’s adorable. You still think that’s how government works. [Laughter]
The NBC-TV skit concludes with President Obama asking the boy, “Well son, what do you think about the government now?” The boy responds, “I think I want to go into the private sector.”
Of course, executive orders are not appropriate if they are contrary to the letter and intent of congressionally-enacted legislation. In his 2008 campaign for the presidency, then-Senator Obama rightly pledged not to use executive orders as an end-run around Congress, stating:
While it is legitimate for a president to issue a signing statement to clarify his understanding of ambiguous provisions of statutes and to explain his view of how he intends to faithfully execute the law, it is a clear abuse of power to use such statements as a license to evade laws that the president does not like or as an end-run around provisions designed to foster accountability.
I will not use signing statements to nullify or undermine congressional instructions as enacted into law.
Chalk that up to another broken campaign promise by Obama. And Saturday Night Live’s brilliant lampoon makes him pay for it.
Image: screengrab from YouTube video of SNL skit
