In what appeared to be an attempt to divert the news cycle from another round of SCOTUS smackdowns, President Obama announced this afternoon that he will bypass Congress to enact “comprehensive immigration reform.” However, at no point did he discuss what his plan would entail.
Citing an attempt to work with Congress a year and a half ago, President Obama declared Congress’ inaction and political posturing to be the reason he must take executive action. “I would sign an immigration bill into law today and Washington would solve a problem in a bipartisan way,” President Obama said. “For more than a year, Republicans in the house have refused to allow an up or down vote to fix our broken immigration system.”
“I take executive action only when we have a serious problem and Congress chooses to do nothing,” the President assured. The most chilling portion of his announcement was when he suggested, “American cannot wait forever for them to act. That’s why today, I’m beginning a new effort to fix our immigration system… on my own, without congress.“
The President’s official Twitter feed paraphrased with the following:
Speaker Boehner promptly responded, “It is sad and disappointing that – faced with this challenge – President Obama won’t work with us, but is instead intent on going it alone with executive orders that can’t and won’t fix these problems.” Boehner went on to say:
“The president’s own executive orders have led directly to the humanitarian crisis along the Southern border, giving false hope to children and their families that if they enter the country illegally they will be allowed to stay. The White House claims it will move to return these children to their families in their home countries, yet additional executive action from this president isn’t going to stem the tide of illegal crossings, it’s only going to make them worse. As the Supreme Court reminded us this week, under our Constitution there are sharp limits to what the president can accomplish if he ignores the American people and their elected representatives.”
Twitter responded as you might expect:
We can only hope this is nothing more than his typical political posturing and that no actual action will come from his reckless disregard of our check and balance system.
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