The following is presented as part of The Columbian’s Opinion content, which offers a point of view in order to provoke thought and debate of civic issues. Opinions represent the viewpoint of the author. Unsigned editorials represent the consensus opinion of The Columbian’s editorial board, which operates independently of the news department.
Although trying to sound nice and balanced about it, President Joe Biden has snubbed a Supreme Court decision, an act of executive autocracy meant to temporarily prevent the evictions of renters not able to pay their rent.
Here is something that sounds benevolent but is an outright smack in the face of thousands and a tragedy for America, one more instance of rule of law taking second place to political connivance.
The whole thing originally came our way through the Trump administration, which in and of itself is enough to make some shiver.
Still, the idea was well intended — to provide truly desperate renters throughout the nation with $46.5 billion so they and their children could pay their rent during this pandemic emergency and not be homeless wanderers especially vulnerable to COVID-19.
The problems with this have been manifold.
To begin with, getting the money from the feds to the states to renters and then to the landlords was complicated beyond bureaucratic means of solution and has seen just $3 billion of the allocation.
Renters often did not receive the money they thought they would get, and neither did hordes of landlords consequently facing bankruptcy.
The new plan hopes to fix the money flow as it will also criminalize landlords who evict when told otherwise, going beyond the rules devised in the early going by cities and states.
Not all impoverished renters have been happy with the program, and there are certainly landlords displeased about not yet receiving promised cash.
People may think of landlords as the rich and infamous, but they are those being especially smacked. Many, it is noted, are simply families trying to make a buck that is no longer available. They can suffer as much as renters, and some may have to sell their property — another way of leaving tenants homeless.
The broader issue is that the Centers for Disease Control, in instituting the program, relied on a 1944 law that allowed no such thing.
Well, yes, if you jumbled the words and exercised your imagination, you could pretend that it did. But when the timeline on the program ran out and the CDC sought an extension, the Supreme Court saw through to the truth. The justices still decided to extend the program long enough for Congress to pass a law making it legal.
Largely because of laxity, Republican opposition and an upcoming recess, Congress did not act, and the Supreme Court ruling said no law, no additional extension.
After saying he would not, Biden acted anyway. He admitted he was likely wrong but still had found a constitutional scholar or two who said he might get away with it.
The pressure from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats who put power before principle and electoral victory before the national good had been insurmountable. Their fear was that Democrats would be publicly blamed for the fix renters were in. What they should be blamed for is threatening our political system.
Please grant, for instance, that central government is not the answer to everything and anything. States and cities, a number of them doing fine financially, should have been allowed to act or not act on their own.
Next, every time politicians ignore the separation of powers, they consolidate power. Keep ignoring the Supreme Court, and someday you won’t have one.
This hit was also on Congress, which is supposed to be the branch of government that writes the law. We now have what’s called the administrative state, in which regulations supplant that function and presidents jump in with illegitimate demands called executive orders.
Biden tells us the measure this time out will apply to only that part of the nation suffering most from COVID-19, about 90 percent of the whole. What we have in this president is something like 10 percent of what many surely wanted.
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