The Limits of Executive Action

I suppose I ought to get excited about the prospect of a new policy that would provide advantages in contracting to companies that pay higher wages and provide better benefits. Certainly, such a policy would be sweeping, affecting huge swaths of the American workforce and major government expenditures:

By altering how it awards $500 billion in contracts each year, the government would disqualify more companies with labor, environmental or other violations and give an edge to companies that offer better levels of pay, health coverage, pensions and other benefits, the officials said.

Because nearly one in four workers is employed by companies that have contracts with the federal government, administration officials see the plan as a way to shape social policy and lift more families into the middle class. It would affect contracts like those awarded to make Army uniforms, clean federal buildings and mow lawns at military bases.

But if the Obama administration does this by executive order, it's hard for me to believe that the fire will be proportionate to the smoke generated over the policy by the administration, labor and business lobbyists alike. If, in fact, this does happen by executive order, it'll be overturned for sure the next time there's a Republican president, and we'll have yet another issue like labor-management partnerships that whipsaws every 8 or 12 or 16 years, far too short a time to provide meaningful policy change. In fact, by the time such an executive order was researched, designed and implemented, there might be very little of an Obama administration left, and therefore very few contracts that will expire and be replaced within the remaining time that the policy is in effect.

If the administration decides to pursue this through legislation, it's a different matter, of course. But I'm exceedingly skeptical that such legislation would pass. The Chamber of Commerce managed to handily nuke the Employee Free Choice Act. And while there may be arguments that this wouldn't diminish the number of jobs since the government would provide a steady market for them, I haven't been impressed by the Democrats' ability to press such arguments in Congress. We'll see. But I don't know that this is worth getting verklempt over yet.