Will the New Congress Rein in Obama?
President Obama boldly announced the creation of a massive new federal spending program by executive order — a decree that would create an expensive new federal aid program to local police agencies — on December 1 in remarks from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building:
I’m going to be proposing some new community policing initiatives that will significantly expand funding and training for local law enforcement, including up to 50,000 additional body-worn cameras for law enforcement agencies. And I look forward to working with Congress to make sure that in addition to what I can do administratively with the resources that we’ve already gotten, that we are in a conversation with law enforcement that wants to do the right thing to make sure that they’re adequately resourced for the training and the technology that can enhance trust between communities and police.
Police-cam panacea? President Obama has promoted the idea of issuing police cameras by executive order as a panacea for the militarization of police, but centralized power at the top is the problem and not the solution. (Photo credit: AP Images)
By “proposing,” Obama’s spokesmen later revealed, he essentially meant enact and spend. While more accountability for local police to their local elected officials is an objectively good end, the centralist means by which this program was created makes it highly objectionable. First, local police agencies are fully capable of funding the purchase of these devices; indeed, they would get the money for the purchase of cameras from the same place as the federal government: the American taxpayer. It’s not as if the federal government can pull wealth out of a void that is inaccessible to state and local governments and apply it to presidential wishlists.
And more important than the issue of federalism and decentralization is that Obama would fund the program exclusively by executive fiat. The Washington, D.C., newspaper The Hill noted that Obama’s new local police program would cost taxpayers some $263 million over three years ($75 million of which would purchase the cameras), all spent without so much as a “by your leave” from Congress. Sure, Obama talked about working with Congress in the speech excerpted above. But he also made abundantly clear the new program would spend the specified money whether Congress sent him additional funds or not. Obama essentially announced he had found $263 million under the seat cushions of the White House couch that he could spend at whim.
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