Escalating the immigration battle to a war of constitutional proportions, House Speaker John A. Boehner said Wednesday that Congress was canceling President Obama’s deportation amnesties in order to keep faith with the founders’ vision of a government where laws are made by Congress, not the White House.
Mr. Boehner, taking to the House floor, said the votes the House will take later Wednesday morning are a signal that Congress means to recapture the powers that have flowed from Capitol Hill to the White House in recent years.
“We do not take this action lightly, but simply there is no alternative,” he said. “This is not a dispute between parties, or even between the branches of government. This executive overreach is an affront to the rule of law and the Constitution itself.”
The Ohio Republican went on to question Mr. Obama’s knowledge of the Constitution, which the president taught to classes at the University of Chicago’s law school.
“To think that the president studied constitutional law at Harvard,” Mr. Boehner said. “But now his actions suggest he’s forgotten what these words even mean.”
Minutes earlier, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi defended Mr. Obama on the floor, saying other presidents had taken the same kinds of actions, granting stays of deportation to other categories of illegal immigrants.
PHOTOS: See Obama's biggest White House fails
The GOP countered that those were smaller programs that applied to only a few people, and were done more carefully, rather than the blanket approvals they said the Obama administration has planned for as many as 5 million illegal immigrants.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.