Over on the main blog, Jamelle writes:
Sen then offers three items -- immigration reform, job assistance and corporate tax reform -- that Obama should pursue while he still has the time.Unfortunately, political capital isn't that straightforward. As we saw at the beginning of Obama's presidency, the mere fact of popularity (or a large congressional majority) doesn't guarantee support from key members of Congress. For Obama to actually sign legislation to reform the immigration system, provide money for jobs, or reform corporate taxes, he needs unified support from his party and support from a non-trivial number of Republicans.
(snip)
when it comes to domestic policy, the presidency is a limited office with limited resources.
Everything Jamelle says is true -- changing systems takes legislative work. But in my experience, well-informed people tend to misconstrue this as "the only domestic policy changes a president can make are by writing or supporting bills," and that isn't true at all. Many laws give executive agencies relatively broad authority to determine their policies and priorities, and those policies can have real effects on people's lives.
Take immigration, for example. (Note: while I work on immigration, my opinions, as always, are my own.) If you're reading this blog, you probably know that President Obama is deporting more immigrants each year than President Bush ever did. But just to jog your memory, here's the chart:
As you can see, that's a pretty big difference from 2000 to 2010. So when did Congress decide that the federal government should ramp up deportations? They didn't, really. The creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003 created a separate agency for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which certainly gave the federal government more resources to deport people, but (as you can see) the number of deportations continues to increase annually several years after ICE was established.
Under the Bush administration, DHS began to rely on agreements (called 287(g) agreements) with state and local law enforcement agencies that allowed their agents to enforce federal immigration law. These agreements were authorized by a 1996 act of Congress, but DHS didn't start issuing them in practice until 2003. The Obama administration has moved away from 287(g) agreements and relies instead on the deportation program known as Secure Communities. Secure Communities was created in response to a line item in a 2008 bill funding DHS to "improve and modernize efforts to identify aliens convicted of a crime, sentenced to imprisonment, and who may be deportable," but in practice, it's deporting tens of thousands of immigrants without criminal records as well.
Is DHS acting without Congressional authority when it expands Secure Communities? Unfortunately, not really, because the point is that DHS has broad discretion when it comes to immigration enforcement. As Adam has reported, and as I explored yesterday, that discretion could just as easily go the other way -- toward more narrowly targeted enforcement. (For a more complete explanation of the executive branch's authority to provide immigration relief, check out this memo.) And that's not even getting into the effect that other departments, like the Department of Justice or the Department of Labor, have on immigration policy. While it's certainly true that Obama can't "reform the immigration system" without the support of Congress, there's a whole lot he can do to improve the immigration system under the authority Congress has already ceded to the executive branch.
I'm sure that immigration isn't the only domestic issue wherein the executive branch could use its authority to make meaningful changes, even if they aren't systemic. Systemic change might be the goal, but in the meantime, the only reason not to improve the things that can be improved is political risk aversion. Last I checked, that's exactly the sort of thing spare political capital is good for.
