I like to go back and read the press from the time things happened. Reagan moved forward and was applauded. This is nothing new and the outrage is duly noted. Then Clinton backed them off and bush was even more aggressive with clintons eos.
Reagan to Use Executive Orders to Bypass Congress
August 21, 1987|JACK NELSON | Times Washington Bureau Chief
WASHINGTON — With 17 months of his presidency remaining, Ronald Reagan will bank on executive orders and judicial action to implement social policies that he cannot persuade Congress to enact, Gary L. Bauer, the President's chief domestic policy adviser, declared Thursday.
Bauer, the feisty attorney Reagan named to push his social issue agenda, said the President may accomplish some of his goals in such areas as abortion and pornography through a series of executive orders and by his appointment of conservative judges to the federal judiciary, including his nomination of Judge Robert H. Bork to the Supreme Court.
"With a hostile Congress that doesn't show much sign of coming toward us on some of these issues, it behooves us to take the initiative when we can take it," Bauer said.
There are a number of things "the President can unilaterally do," Bauer said, as evidenced by the plan Reagan announced three weeks ago to curb federal funding for organizations and groups that support abortion.
The plan will drastically restrict the ability of 4,500 federally funded family-planning clinics to give their patients information about abortion. Critics contend that it violates the intent of Congress by using regulations to achieve a purpose Congress rejected and violates the First Amendment by impeding the flow of information.
Bauer, 41, relatively little-known in his earlier Administration assignments, may become an increasingly influential figure in the remaining months of the Reagan White House. He shares many social and political beliefs held by the President and is regarded as an effective advocate of such conservative views on many key issues.
Interviewed at a breakfast session with reporters and editors of The Times' Washington Bureau, Bauer said executive orders may also be used to combat pornography and that his staff is studying a proposed executive order that would ban the sale of pornographic material on post exchanges at military bases.
The issue raises obvious constitutional questions, he said, and is being studied because "we want to make sure whatever we do is legal." Bauer said some spot checks made by outside groups disclosed "some really remarkably inappropriate material being sold in PXs." He did not identify the groups.
"I guess the analogy I would use (is): Does anybody think it would be acceptable if a PX sold material that was racially bigoted? Let's say we found that a PX had material in it by the klan calling certain races various things. I don't think anybody would bat an eye if the President issued an executive order saying that we will not exploit racial differences in government bookstores on Army bases. It seems to me that it's not that far a step to say nor will we sell material that is offensive to women," he said.
Opposition in Congress
Pornography is the one social issue where the Administration plans to introduce legislation even though heavy opposition can be expected in Congress. Bauer said legislation will be introduced to "try to implement" the report proposing restrictions on distribution of pornography that Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III delivered last year.
Bauer, a short and round-faced man, is a self-described "Reagan true believer," who served as undersecretary of education before being appointed assistant to the President for policy development last Jan. 30.
At the Education Department and the White House, he has endeared himself to the Republican right wing and incurred the wrath of the Democratic left wing by fighting tenaciously for the President's social issues agenda and blaming liberals for many of the social problems plaguing the nation today.
Study of Family Life
At the Education Department, he headed a 22-member interdepartmental group that studied American family life for seven months and concluded that "two liberal decades" had resulted in increased crime, illegitimate birth, drug use, teen-age pregnancy, divorce, poverty and sexually transmitted disease. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), an expert on welfare policy, called the report "less a policy paper than a tantrum" and charged: "They're not writing from facts. This is just ideology."
It goes on to talk about other things like Bork.
