Obama immigration executive action to haunt Democrats, Republicans warn

Citing the precedent being set by President Obama, Democrats should brace themselves for new tax cuts, a rollback of environmental regulations and a raft of other unilateral steps bestowed through executive action as soon as the next Republican president takes the oath of office, GOP lawmakers warn.

Mr. Obama’s move to unilaterally change the nation’s immigration enforcement system, announced in a prime-time national address Thursday evening, will empower all future presidents to rewrite almost any federal law not to their liking, Republican critics say, which one day will vex the very Democrats who cheered the maneuver.

“If this is legal, then certainly it would be legal for me if I got elected president tomorrow to say, ’You know, I’ve never liked the capital gains tax, and I think it should be zero,’” said Rep. Michael K. Simpson, Idaho Republican. “But I can’t get Congress to pass a bill to do that. … So I’m just going to tell the IRS that we’re not going to collect capital gains tax.”

Imagining such a theoretical President Simpson prime-time TV address to the nation, he quipped, “If you owe it, don’t worry about paying it, because we’re not going to come and collect it.”

From the tax code to environmental rules, GOP lawmakers said there are a number of areas where a future Republican president could claim the same kinds of prosecutorial discretion to waive enforcement.

Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Republican, said that Mr. Obama had initiated a constitutional crisis by assuming the powers of “a monarch.”

“For everyone who thinks that’s great because you happen to support President Obama’s policy agenda, just wait until the next president comes in and begins unilaterally changing tax laws and environmental laws and labor laws,” said Mr. Cruz.

“The Constitution sets up a process to change federal law. The process is that the president has to work with Congress, work with both parties, and that means compromise. You have to find a middle ground. Monarchs don’t have to compromise,” he said. “There is a reason the framers of our Constitution worked so hard to limit executive power. Thomas Jefferson said the Constitution serves ’as chains to bind the mischief of government.’ Those chains are breaking.”

White House officials argue that the president’s moves are well within his authority, and say every president for the last half-century has made similar moves on immigration enforcement, claiming powers of prosecutorial discretion to decide how to best use limited immigration resources.

Democrats point in particular to Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush, who had the immigration service halt deportations of relatives of immigrants who were granted status under the 1986 amnesty Reagan signed into law.

Conservatives, though, say those presidents were trying to implement a law Congress passed and compare that to Mr. Obama, who they say is trying to act in spite of Congress.

Republican lawmakers said the president will effectively be dictating which groups of illegal immigrants will or will not be deported, which they said violates his constitutional obligation to “take care” that the laws Congress writes are faithfully executed.

They cite Mr. Obama’s own past words against him, with the president repeatedly telling immigration activists in recent years that he lacked the authority to implement major immigration legal reform without congressional authorization.

Critical lawmakers also say they see a pattern of Mr. Obama ignoring law or making his own laws, including releasing detainees from the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, without notifying Congress and using Environmental Protection Agency regulations to implement climate change policy rejected by Congress.

The immigration law rewrite, however, stood out as the most far-reaching and dangerous move yet, they said.

“There is hardly any limit to what he would be able to do if he gets by with this,” said Sen. James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican. “Our Founding Fathers never anticipated we’d have someone [as president] who blatantly and joyfully breaks the law.”

Maryland Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, dismissed Republican predictions that Mr. Obama’s moves would usher in an imperial presidency.

“It is a temporary thing, so I have no fear of that,” he said. “I think he’s tailored what he is going to do very carefully and within the limits of his power.”

Mr. Cummings said that the circumstances justified Mr. Obama’s actions.

“You’ve got families that are being divided. You’ve got one life to live. This is no dress rehearsal,” said Mr. Cummings. “Sometimes I think these are the things you have to do. Period.”