Rand Paul: Immigration on list of ‘host’ of issues where Obama has ‘changed his mind’

Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, said immigration can be added to the list of issues where President Obama has said one thing and done another.

“I don’t even know how you can, with a straight face, defend the indefensible,” Mr. Paul said on Tuesday evening’s “The Kelly File” on Fox News. “How do you defend against the president’s actual words 20 times saying he didn’t have the power? The president went even so far as to say he’s not a king, he’s not an emperor, that he can’t do this, and now we have a complete about-face that everybody’s going to just say, ’Oh well, the president just changed his mind.’ “

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson was confronted with Mr. Obama’s own words on the president’s lack of unilateral powers during a Capitol Hill hearing Tuesday, saying he’s comfortable with the president’s legal justification for granting temporary amnesty for nearly 5 million illegal immigrants in the country.

“I think this isn’t just one issue — there’s a pattern to this type of behavior,” Mr. Paul said. “On Obamacare, they have amended Obamacare after the fact, without any congressional authority — they’re now doing it on immigration, but they’ve also done it on war powers as well. The constitution gives this power to Congress, and yet the president just says, ’I’ll do it.’ “

“But when the president ran for office, he said adamantly he didn’t have the power to do war, also without congressional authority,” Mr. Paul said. “So he’s changed his mind on a host of issues.”

House Republicans are weighing a plan to fund the government past Dec. 11 that would avoid a government shutdown by providing funding for most of the government through the end of the fiscal year and carve out spending for homeland security funding in a separate item that would last until early next year, when a Congress fully controlled by Republicans could revisit the issue.

Mr. Paul said shutting down the government “won’t do any good,” saying Republicans will have the power come January to write all of the appropriations bills and shouldn’t use their power to shut down the government in December.