The Reign of Error by power–mad governors and their ‘public health expert’ enablers is finally ending. Voters in Pennsylvania just took steps to make sure the Era of Error stays closed.
In our Republic, government is supposed to be designed with checks and balances that contribute to a balance of power that in turn prevents the exercise of arbitrary power by any one branch. In Pennsylvania, the Pandemic Panic caused the system to break down.
Gov. Tom Wolf eagerly made all the mistakes of the other leftist governors and fought tooth–and–nail to keep his arbitrary power. The legislature — which is supposed to act as a check on the executive’s power — passed over a half–dozen bills that were designed to reign in Wolf’s superpowers under a disaster declaration. Wolf thwarted the legislative branch by vetoing every one of the bills. Democrat legislators voting in lockstep prevented the legislature from overriding Wolf’s veto.
Opponents of Wolf and his Branch Covidian Cult then went to the judicial branch to try and end the virus tyranny and watched as partisan elected judges threw their cases out of court.
Legislators finally bypassed the governor and went directly to the foundation upon which Republican government rests: the people. The legislature drafted two constitutional amendments, which the governor can’t veto or otherwise block, and sent the amendments to Pennsylvania voters for approval.
We’ll let Fox News describe what happened, “Pennsylvanians on Tuesday voted to strip Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s emergency powers that he imposed during the COVID-19 outbreak. …Republican Reps. Bryan Cutler and Kerry Benninghoff said in a joint statement that Tuesday’s vote ‘resoundingly reaffirmed’ Pennsylvanian’s ‘desire for a government with strong checks and balances that works in their interests and not for its own power.’”
Now Pennsylvania joins New York— where a politically weakened Gov. Andrew Cuomo saw his legislature gather the gumption to stand up for itself — and seven other states in striping some emergency authority from a power–mad executive branch.
It’s quite the wave of reaction to overreach. Ballotpedia lists more than 300 executive oversight bills that have been filed in 45 states.
Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Foundation President Charles Mitchell summed it up nicely, “It is prudent to allow executives to act quickly and decisively in case of an emergency. However, the principles of representative self-government dictate that such decisive action cannot be maintained in perpetuity, without any valid check on executive power. Our state and federal governments must find ways to simultaneously protect the lives and livelihoods of the people while not violating our rights as free citizens.”
The new Keystone State amendments reduce the governor’s emergency proclamation power from the former 90 days to a new length of 21 days and the legislature must approve the extension of any emergency order past that time limit. And the legislature can end an emergency proclamation at any time with a simple majority vote.
It’s too bad all states don’t have this check on the power of a runaway executive. And it’s equally a shame governors abused their power in the first place.
Michael Reagan, the eldest son of President Reagan, is a Newsmax TV analyst. A syndicated columnist and author, he chairs The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Michael is an in-demand speaker with Premiere speaker's bureau. Read Michael Reagan's Reports — More Here.
Michael R. Shannon is a commentator, researcher for the League of American Voters, and an award-winning political and advertising consultant with nationwide and international experience. He is author of "Conservative Christian's Guidebook for Living in Secular Times (Now with added humor!)" Read Michael Shannon's Reports — More Here.