President Obama has been handed over 20 unanimous, nine to zero defeats before the Supreme Court on his Administration’s illegal and unconstitutional actions. This makes one thing clear to us all; this president severely misunderstands the Constitution.
President Obama has been handed over 20 unanimous, nine to zero defeats before the Supreme Court on his Administration’s illegal and unconstitutional actions. This makes one thing clear to us all; this president severely misunderstands the Constitution.
Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution reads: “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives.”
Article I explicitly states that the law-making power is vested in the legislative branch, not the executive branch. President Obama has clearly interpreted the Constitution in a different way than the Framers intended. Instead of upholding and enforcing the laws passed by Congress, the president goes around Congress through regulation and executive orders, or ignores the will of the people all together. He continues to violate the Constitutional provision that the president is to ‘take care that the Laws be faithfully executed,’ an oath he swore to uphold.
Through executive order he has set his own policy agenda in everything from healthcare, energy and immigration. In 2014, against the will of Congress and the American people, President Obama issued executive amnesty to 5 million illegal aliens. Recently, it was revealed by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency that 124 illegal immigrant criminals, released from jail by the Obama Administration, have committed murder after their release. Further, only 3 percent of criminal illegal aliens arrested in 2014 were actually deported back to their home countries. Today, there are approximately 11 million illegal immigrants living in our country.
Not only did I vote to defund his executive amnesty action, but it was immediately challenged in the courts, by Texas and 25 other states. In April 2015, I along with my colleagues in the House supported the states challenge to the unconstitutional executive amnesty, by submitting a brief in support of the case, known as U.S. v. Texas. And just yesterday, I voted in the House to authorize Speaker Paul Ryan to also file a brief in the Supreme Court that the Administration has acted in a manner that is not consistent with their duties under the Constitution and laws of the United States.
This case is about much more than immigration policy; it vigorously defends the Article I authority of Congress, which has been violated by the president’s executive actions. This is an issue about Checks and Balances, the crucial founding principle of our nation, and it cannot be ignored.
Numerous times the president has spoken about how broken our political system is. He claims Democrats and Republicans won’t reach across the aisle to find bipartisan solutions to problems our country faces. However, his self-interested actions create partisan politics, instead of working with Congress to make real progress for the American people.
Throughout his tenure President Obama has ignored Congress and forgotten that the genesis of our Constitution was to escape a king, not to install one. Even though his tenure is winding to a close, Congress is in the unfortunate position of fighting the president to the bitter end. I will continue to fight against President Obama’s blatant disregard for our Constitution until the result is a restoration to the principles our country was founded on over 200 years ago.
