Rep. Paul Ryan said it loud and clear on a recent appearance on “Hannity” on Fox News: Republicans in Congress would do whatever it took to halt President Obama’s executive actions on immigration and amnesty.
“Well, first of all, it’s unconstitutional,” Mr. Ryan said, responding to host Sean Hannity’s question about Mr. Obama’s vow to issue an executive order to open the doors of amnesty to millions of illegals in the country, The Daily Caller reported.
“We’re already going through the court system on other unconstitutional executive orders that he’s worked on and we would add this to the pile,” Mr. Ryan said. “Second of all, if we can get the power of the purse, we will explore every option that we can to exercise that power of the purse to get this executive to honor the Constitution.”
Mr. Ryan also said that Mr. Obama would “put millions of people in legal limbo” if he went ahead with his executive actions on immigration — “something that’s so blatantly unconstitutional,” he said, The Daily Caller reported.
“And so we’re telling the administration, ’Don’t even think about doing this,’ ” Mr. Ryan said. “It’s not constitutional. It’s going around Congress. If you what to change a law, then go to Congress and work with Congress to change the law. You can’t unilaterally write a law as the executive — that’s not how the Constitution works.”
Mr. Hannity reminded that Mr. Obama’s “done it on health care, he’s done it on immigration, he’s done it with welfare, he did it with the National labor Relations Board appointments,” The Daily Caller reported.
And Mr. Ryan’s reply?
“It’s one of the reasons we’re taking him to court as well,” he said. “But more importantly, because we don’t have the Senate, we don’t have the power of the purse.”
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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