Category Archives: Obamacare

Boehner Files Lawsuit Against Obama Today

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After the immigration speech Barack Obama delivered on November 20, John Boehner today filed the House lawsuit against Treasury and Health and Human Services.

The full 38 page complaint is listed here.

The points of the lawsuit are:

THE BASICS OF THE HOUSE LITIGATION

  • The president’s unilateral actions on the health care law’s employer mandate in 2013 and 2014 will likely be the focus of the litigation brought by the House.  There are many examples of executive overreach by the president, but his actions on the health care law are arguably the ones that give the House the best chance of success in the courts.
  • The litigation will focus solely on the president’s unilateral changes to the health care law because that’s how the suit must be structured in order to maximize the House’s chances of being granted standing by the court.  Basing the litigation on a laundry list of grievances against the president would make standing more difficult.
  • In the case of the health care law’s employer mandate, the president twice changed the law without going through Congress, effectively creating his own law by literally waiving the mandate and the penalties for failing to comply with it.  He legislated without the Legislative Branch.  The Constitution doesn’t give presidents the power to do that.  No president should have such authority.  That’s what the House litigation will argue.

Republicans call Obama executive actions ‘damaging to presidency,’ file lawsuit over Obamacare

By Paul Kane

House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) launched a double-barreled response to President Obama’s recent executive actions on Friday, announcing a House lawsuit over unilateral changes to Obamacare and vowing to counter Obama’s move to protect millions of illegal immigrants from deportation with additional legislative action.

He warned that the executive action on immigration was “damaging the presidency” and that Congress will not let it stand without a fight.

“Time after time, the president has chosen to ignore the will of the American people and rewrite federal law on his own without a vote of Congress. That’s not the way our system of government was designed to work,” Boehner said.

The lawsuit, filed Friday against the Health and Human Services (HHS) and Treasury secretaries, challenges two of Obama’s executive actions: that his administration “unlawfully waived the employer mandate” and illegally transferred funds to insurance companies.

Obama’s executive actions twice delaying the employer mandate “directly contradict the clear and plain language of the health care law,” Boehner said in a statement.

Boehner also said that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the administration will pay $3 billion to insurance companies this fiscal year, and will make payments of $175 billion over the next 10 years under an HHS-based cost-sharing program, even though Congress has never appropriated funds for the program.

Boehner declined to spell out how Republicans would counter the immigration executive actions, which extend protections to roughly 4 million undocumented parents of legal U.S. citizens and young immigrants brought here illegally when they were children.

“We’re working with our members and looking at the options available to us, but I will say to you the House will, in fact, act,” Boehner told reporters Friday morning, in the first televised Republican rebuttal to Obama’s prime-time address Thursday night.

He dodged a question about the assertion by one of his own leadership team members, House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), that there was little Congress could do to restrict funding for the new program. Rogers and his staff said Thursday that funding for the implementation of the new policy does not come from the annual spending bills approved by Congress but instead comes from border fees, placing it outside the reach of congressional Republicans.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the leading opponent of the president’s action, told reporters Thursday that he would support attaching a policy rider onto the government funding bills that simply forbid the federal workforce from implementing the new rules on immigration. Sessions is leading the effort to keep government funding to a short leash into the new year, when Republicans take over the Senate and control both chambers of Congress, making it easier to get clear majorities for his preferred line of attack.

Such a move would require a 60-vote super-majority in the Senate, and it would almost certainly draw a veto from Obama, which, critics say, would lead to a possible shutdown of some federal agencies.

Boehner deflected those questions and instead blamed Obama for issuing too many executive orders to modify the controversial new health law that took effect over the last year, which left his rank-and-file Republicans unwilling to trust the president and refusing to even consider a broad rewrite of immigration laws.

“He created an environment where the members could not trust him, and trying to find a way to work together was virtually impossible, and I had warned the president over and over that his actions were making it impossible for me to do what he wanted me to do,” the speaker said, explaining his inability to even consider smaller pieces of the 2013 Senate-approved legislation that revamped border and immigration laws.

“We have a broken immigration system, and the American people expect us to work together to fix it, and we ought to do it through the democratic process,” he said.

In his prime-time speech from the East Room of the White House, Obama blamed Republicans for forcing his hand by refusing to approve immigration reform and told them, “Pass a bill.”

Conservatives inside and outside Congress want to use the budget process as a battleground to wage war against Obama and his immigration program. The proposed gambit raises the specter of another government shutdown, akin to the one that damaged Republicans last year.

In a floor speech Thursday, soon-to-be Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) suggested that his preference would be for Republicans to avoid becoming mired in a fiscal clash during the lame-duck session, shortly before the GOP takes control of the Senate in January.

Many conservative lawmakers are shrugging off those pleas, however. Furious with the president, they are planning a series of immediate and hard-line actions that could have sweeping consequences. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said Wednesday that Obama’s executive action should be met with a refusal to vote on any more of his nominees, and on Thursday, he compared the action with the ancient Catiline conspiracy, a plot to overthrow the Roman Republic.

Sessions (R-Ala.), likely the next chairman of the budget committee, has advocated for a series of stopgap spending bills with the intent of pressuring the president to relent. Sessions is the featured speaker at a Heritage Foundation event Friday morning in response to Obama’s moves.

And Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) — one of the loudest voices on the right — has hinted at bringing up impeachment measures. “We have constitutional authority to do a string of things. [Impeachment] would be the very last option, but I would not rule it out,” King said Thursday on CNN.

Robert A. Costa contributed to this report.

 

Amnesty Speech Full of Lies

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If you think that Barack Obama is governing the United States in the best interest of the nation you would be wrong. If you think he is leading, you would be wrong. Barack Obama reacts to only pressure from special interest and none was more poignant that the 15 minute speech he gave on November 15, 2014. This speech not only was full of distortions and omissions but was driven by several factors including powerbrokers speaking on behalf of illegals. If there is any question about how the speech came to be that Obama delivered last night, then click here for who was behind the event.

The law of unintended consequences are still to be determined. Just one consequence of Obama’s action goes back to Jonathan Gruber. He has been fast at work for years giving opaque points on Obamacare, but here is how illegals will be part of the healthcare system on your tax dollars.

Now for the speech, even the Associated Press delivered the Pinocchio report.

FACT CHECK: Obama’s claims on illegal immigration

By ALICIA A. CALDWELL and ERICA WERNER
Associated PressWASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama made some notable omissions Thursday night in his remarks about the unilateral actions he’s taking on immigration.

A look at his statements and how they compare with the facts:

OBAMA: “It does not grant citizenship, or the right to stay here permanently, or offer the same benefits that citizens receive – only Congress can do that. All we’re saying is we’re not going to deport you.”

THE FACTS: He’s saying, and doing, more than that. The changes also will make those covered eligible for work permits, allowing them to be employed in the country legally and compete with citizens and legal residents for better-paying jobs.

___

OBAMA: “Although this summer, there was a brief spike in unaccompanied children being apprehended at our border, the number of such children is now actually lower than it’s been in nearly two years.”

THE FACTS: The numbers certainly surged this year, but it was more than a “brief spike.” The number of unaccompanied children apprehended at the border has been on the rise since the 2011 budget year. That year about 16,000 children were found crossing the border alone. In 2012, the Border Patrol reported more than 24,000 children, followed by more than 38,800 in 2013. In the last budget year, more than 68,361 children were apprehended.

___

OBAMA: “Overall, the number of people trying to cross our border illegally is at its lowest level since the 1970s. Those are the facts.”

THE FACTS: Indeed, in the 2014 budget year the Border Patrol made 486,651 arrests of border crossers, among the fewest since the early 1970s. But border arrests have been on the rise since 2011.

The decline in crossings is not purely, or perhaps even primarily, due to the Obama administration. The deep economic recession early in his presidency and the shaky aftermath made the U.S. a less attractive place to come for work. The increase in arrests since 2011 also can be traced in part to the economy – as the recovery improved, more people came in search of opportunity.

___

OBAMA: “When I took office, I committed to fixing this broken immigration system. And I began by doing what I could to secure our borders.”

THE FACTS: He overlooked the fact that he promised as a candidate for president in 2008 to have an immigration bill during his first year in office and move forward on it quickly. He never kept that promise to the Latino community.

___

Associated Press writers Calvin Woodward and Jim Kuhnhenn contributed to this report.

EDITOR’S NOTE _ An occasional look at political claims that take shortcuts with the facts or don’t tell the full story.

Then the Wall Street Journal delivered their summary of the immigration speech. Obama centered the speech and actions only around himself.

I, Barack

The immigration order is an abuse of power that fails as a policy reform.

President Obama ’s decision to legalize millions of undocumented immigrants by his own decree is a sorry day for America’s republic. We say that even though we agree with the cause of immigration reform. But process matters to self-government—sometimes it is the only barrier to tyranny—and Mr. Obama’s policy by executive order is tearing at the fabric of national consent.

The first question to address is Mr. Obama’s legal rationale. At least he finally rolled out a memo from the experts on presidential power in the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel, but it’s fair to wonder how much time he gave them. The OLC made its justification public about an hour before the speech.

The President’s rationale is “prosecutorial discretion,” but he is stretching that legal concept beyond normal understanding. The executive branch does have discretion about whom to prosecute. But this typically extends to individual cases, or to setting priorities due to limited resources such as prosecuting cocaine but not marijuana use.

Mr. Obama claims he is using his discretion to focus on such high deportation priorities as criminals, but he is going much further and is issuing an order exempting from deportation entire classes of people—as many as five million. Justice’s OLC memo claims there is no such categorical exemption, and that immigration officials can still deport someone if they want to, but the memo offers no measures by which to make that “complex judgment.” In practice it will almost never happen.

The Reagan and Bush precedents cited by the Obama lawyers are different in kind and degree. They involved far fewer people and they were intended to fulfill the policy set by Congress—not, as Mr. Obama intends, to defy Congress. That is why their actions were done with little controversy.

Mr. Obama is issuing his order amid furious political opposition and after his own multiple previous declarations that he lacks legal authority. “If we start broadening that [his 2012 order for undocumented children], then essentially I’ll be ignoring the law in a way that I think would be very difficult to defend legally,” Mr. Obama said on Telemundo in September 2013. Until now.

While we favor generous immigration, Mr. Obama’s order also fails as policy because it won’t reduce the economic incentive that drives illegal immigration. The only way to reduce the flow of illegal migrants is to offer enough legal ways to work in the U.S. and then return home.

His unilateral order will encourage more migrants to come in hope of a future amnesty, without matching the ebb and flow of migration to America’s changing labor market demands. His order also offers no prospect of future citizenship, creating a laboring class with less of a stake in American institutions—and less incentive to assimilate.

The politics of immigration is already fraught, and Mr. Obama’s order will make it worse. He is empowering the most extreme anti-immigrant voices on the Republican right, which may be part of his political calculation.

Mr. Obama wants Democrats to get political credit with Hispanics for legalization, while goading the GOP into again becoming the deportation party in 2016. Hillary Clinton would love that, which explains why Bill Clinton is already backing Mr. Obama’s order. Mark this down as one more way in which this President has become the Great Polarizer.

How should Republicans respond? They can use their own constitutional powers without falling into Mr. Obama’s political trap. Impeachment is a fool’s errand that would change the political subject and fail. The power of the purse is an obvious tool now that the GOP will soon control the Senate, but that will require patience and unity to prevail over Mr. Obama’s vetoes.

The best GOP revenge would be to trump him on immigration. Before Mr. Obama’s decree, smart Republicans were discussing a legislative strategy focusing on piecemeal immigration reforms. Separate bills addressing individual problems (border security, agriculture and tech visas) could pass with rotating majorities that show the GOP has immigration solutions of its own. Some bills might get to Mr. Obama’s desk, forcing him to reveal his cynical political hand if he uses his veto to block durable reform.

We realize this won’t be easy, especially as many on the anti-immigrant right will want an immediate strategy to defund the President’s order. But another Pickett’s charge up Shutdown Hill is exactly what Mr. Obama wants. Republicans need to keep the focus on Mr. Obama’s abuse of power while showing voters they have better immigration solutions.

***

The polls show the American people are uneasy about Mr. Obama’s unilateral law-making, and liberals should be too. Mr. Obama is setting a precedent that Republican Presidents could also use to overcome a Democratic majority. How about an order to the IRS not to collect capital-gains taxes on inflated gains from property held for more than a decade? That policy would be broadly popular and also address a basic lack of fairness.

Mr. Obama’s rule-by-regulation has already been rebuked more than once by the Supreme Court. His “I, Barack” immigration decree is another abuse that will roil American politics and erode public confidence in the basic precepts of self-government.

U.S. Constant State of Emergency

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From the White House on National Security:

Progress

Guiding Principles

The President’s highest priority is to keep the American people safe. He is committed to ensuring the United States is true to our values and ideals while also protecting the American people. The President is committed to securing the homeland against 21st century threats by preventing terrorist attacks and other threats against our homeland, preparing and planning for emergencies, and investing in strong response and recovery capabilities. We will help ensure that the Federal Government works with states and local governments, and the private sector as close partners in a national approach to prevention, mitigation, and response.

The National Security Strategy, released May 27, 2010, lays out a strategic approach for advancing American interests, including the security of the American people, a growing U.S. economy, support for our values, and an international order that can address 21st century challenges.

But the last time a National Security strategy was addressed in total was 2010.

Meanwhile, see below.

The United States is in a state of emergency – 30 of them, in fact

By Christopher Ingraham

The United States has been in an uninterrupted state of national emergency since 1979. Here in 2014, we’re not dealing with just one emergency – there are currently 30 of them in effect.

That’s according to data on presidential declarations of emergency compiled by Gregory Korte of USA Today. “Those emergencies, declared by the president by proclamation or executive order, give the president extraordinary powers — to seize property, call up the National Guard and hire and fire military officers at will,” Korte writes.

President Obama has declared nine so far, eight of which are currently in effect — they primarily deal with preventing business with people or organizations involved in global conflicts or the drug trade. Obama has also renewed many of his predecessors’ orders — just last week he renewed our ongoing state of emergency with respect to Iran for its 36th straight year.

Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush took a light touch on declarations of emergency – they invoked only a handful, none of which remain in effect. But Bill Clinton proclaimed 16 emergencies and George W. Bush declared 14, 13 of which are still in effect today.

Blocking business transactions with various interests may not seem like national emergency material. But the language underlying these declarations is often nearly apocalyptic. Obama’s recent continuation of a Bush-era emergency relating to “the property of certain persons contributing to the conflict” in the Democratic Republic of the Congo states that “this situation continues to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States.”

The Obama administration also maintains that “the actions and policies of certain members of the Government of Belarus and other persons continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”

You may wonder why the president needs to declare a state of emergency to deal with what appears to be fairly routine instances of corruption in far-flung corners of the world. Korte notes that Congress provides little oversight on emergency declarations, even through it’s mandated to do so by law. In an era when tussles over executive power are a near-daily occurrence, this is a strange incongruity.

“What the National Emergencies Act does is like a toggle switch, and when the president flips it, he gets new powers. It’s like a magic wand. and there are very few constraints about how he turns it on,” said Kim Lane Scheppele, a Princeton professor interviewed by Korte.

In the absence of a crisis, there’s little compelling reason for a government to adopt a permanent crisis stance. The danger is that a public desensitized to claims to extraordinary circumstances could be more likely to allow excesses of authority performed in the name of those circumstances.

As Korte writes, “A post-9/11 state of national emergency declared by President George W. Bush — and renewed six times by President Obama — forms the legal basis for much of the war on terror” — a war which has so far seen a rise in terrorism around the globe.

Hey Obama, the VA is Still Broken

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Congress, do your job on VA scandal

The Obama administration wants to be clear: they’re very, very angry over the dysfunctional state of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), where reports of falsified wait lists and delayed care at VA medical centers are growing into a national scandal for the executive branch.

Specifically, administration officials say they’re “mad as hell.” That’s how VA Secretary Eric Shinseki described his response to the scandal in testimony to the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee last week.

 On Sunday, the White House chief of staff told CBS’s “Face the Nation” that President Obama, not to be outdone, is “madder than hell” about the VA’s failures.

Of course, what’s lost in this contrived and cynical display of outrage from the president and his VA secretary is the fact that they’re the ones responsible for the agency’s performance. If the VA isn’t working, they should be working to fix it—not telling us how angry it makes them, like a pair of passive observers to the scene.

If anyone should be “madder than hell” right now, it’s the veterans and their families who are suffering from VA’s poor service and performance.

We also now know that these problems were raised with the administration during the presidential transition in 2008.  The president and Sec. Shinseki knew about the problems then – red tape, wait times, uneven care – and yet did not fix the problems.  Instead, together they made the problem worse; exploding the VA budget without demanding commensurate improvements in performance.

We’re beyond the point when expressing outrage, or long drawn-out investigations, at VA can be considered a constructive response. We know what the problems are; it’s time for action.

This week, members of Congress will have an opportunity to set the department on the right course, by voting for the VA Management Accountability Act of 2014 (H.R. 4031). They should waste no time in passing this necessary reform.

The bill’s aim is simple — to restore accountability to a department where the leadership and bureaucracy have come to show an alarming indifference to their mission of timely and quality service to veterans. By empowering the VA secretary to fire and replace those executives who fail to perform, the VA Management Accountability Act is an important step toward righting the ship. Right now it’s nearly impossible to fire bad managers at VA, and therefore nearly impossible to hold leaders accountable.

It’s difficult to overstate the seriousness of the problems at VA.

In recent weeks, we’ve learned that officials at various VA medical facilities around the nation have been falsifying patient wait lists, essentially “cooking the books” to make it appear that veterans are receiving timely care. In reality, patients were waiting months for appointments—and in many cases, dying while waiting on “secret lists.”

In Phoenix, where the scandal broke, the retired VA doctor who blew the whistle on the fraud estimates perhaps 40 veterans died while waiting for care on the secret wait list. An investigation is in progress, and criminal charges for VA officials involved in the alleged fraud are a real possibility. Regardless of criminal charges and investigations—both of which should happen—we know this: the system is infected and needs systemic reform.

It’s against this backdrop that the need for stronger accountability controls at VA has become clear. While the department has suffered a string of scandals and performance failures, the current leadership has taken no steps to shake up the leadership team and force change. (The ritual sacrifice on May 16 of Dr. Robert Petzel, VA undersecretary for health care, was a sham—Petzel had already announced he was planning to retire in a few months.)

Greater accountability will serve as a spur to improved performance at VA. The department suffers from a “widespread and systemic lack of accountability,” Rep. Jeff Miller, said when he introduced H.R. 4031 in February. But he also noted that the department has many able and professional employees, who would benefit from stronger accountability controls to weed out poor performers.

“While the vast majority of VA’s more than 300,000 employees and executives are dedicated and hard-working,” Miller said, “the department’s well-documented reluctance to ensure its leaders are held accountable for mistakes is tarnishing the reputation of the organization and may actually be encouraging more veteran suffering instead of preventing it.”

The bill now has significant bipartisan support in the House of Representatives, with 118 members signed on as co-sponsors. That’s a good start, and other members of Congress should now join in supporting the bill’s passage. It’s time.

If anyone deserves to be “madder than hell” right now, it’s the veterans and their families who are suffering from VA’s poor service and performance. In the absence of leadership from the executive branch, it’s put up or shut up time for Congress. It’s time to do right by our veterans by restoring accountability to VA.

Pete Hegseth is a Fox News contributor. He is the CEO of Concerned Veterans for America and the former executive director of Vets for Freedom. He is an infantry officer in the Army National Guard and has served tours in Afghanistan and Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay. Learn more at: www.concernedveteransforamerica.org.

WASHINGTON — More than 600,000 veterans — 10% of all the Veterans Affairs patients — continue to wait a month or more for appointments at VA hospitals and clinics, according to data obtained by USA TODAY.

The VA has made some progress in dealing with the backlog of cases that forced former secretary Eric Shinseki to retire early this year. For instance, the VA substantially cut the overall number of worst-case scenarios for veterans — those who had waited more than four months for an appointment. That figure dropped from 120,000 in May to 23,000 in October. Much of that improvement occurred because patients received care from private providers.

Since May, the VA has been reduced the number of veterans waiting longest for care — its top priority — by 57%, according to James Hutton, a VA spokesman. From June to September, the VA completed 19 million appointments, an increase of 1.2 million compared with the same time last year.

“VA’s goal continues to be to provide timely, high-quality healthcare for veterans,” Hutton said in a statement. “Veterans and VA employees nationwide understand the need for reform, and VA is committed to putting these reforms into place. And while we have significantly improved capacity and access to care, we have not yet achieved our intended state — systemic and timely access across the board. It will be an ongoing and significant effort to reach our goals.”

To recruit more health care providers, VA Secretary Robert McDonald has proposed pay hikes for VA doctors and dentists, Hutton said. McDonald announced a restructuring of the VA on Nov. 10.

The new data show that dozens of hospitals and clinics leave a quarter or more of all their patients waiting 30 days or more for an appointment.

• Some facilities still have extremely long wait times for basic care, including 64 that have average wait times over 60 days for new patients seeking primary care. They include major facilities, such as hospitals in Baltimore; Jacksonville, Fla.; Temple, Texas, and Atlanta. All have at least 30,000 pending appointments.?

In Jacksonville, the average new patient is left waiting 77 days, a fact that previously obscured in the VA’s data because it was averaged into the much-better performance of the nearby Gainesville hospital. Jacksonville only sees two-thirds of its patients within 30 days, the worst rate of any major facility in the VA system.

The VA is hiring more staff to deal with those delays, Hutton said.

• Ten facilities reported waits of more than three months for a new patient to see a specialist. At the top of the list: the Westmoreland, Pa., clinic, where patients are waiting 174 days — nearly six months — for a specialty appointment.

Thirty-three facilities have kept new patients seeking a mental-health appointments waiting for at least two months. Among those are large hospitals in Martinsburg, W.Va., Amarillo, Texas, and Tuskegee, Ala. And 10 clinics and hospitals kept established patients waiting at least three weeks longer than the patients wanted for mental health appointments.

• Some small locations have big waiting times, too. The Wagner, S.D., clinic near the Nebraska state line, has only 155 total appointments of any type pending — and its new patient wait time is 153 days.

The data looks at nearly 6 million appointments until Oct. 1 and scheduled through Veterans Health Administration.

Members of Congress continue to express dissatisfaction with the delays in disciplining VA employees involved in covering up the long wait times.

“The events of the last year have proven that far too many senior VA leaders have lied, manipulated data, or simply failed to do the job for which they were hired,” said Rep. Jeff Miller, a Florida Republican and chairman of House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, during a hearing Thursday. “It is also clear that VA’s attempt to instill accountability for these leaders has been both nearly non-existent and rife with self-inflicted roadblocks to real reform.”

Amnesty/Deportation, Obama’s Scam

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22 Times President Obama Said He Couldn’t Ignore or Create His Own Immigration Law –

With the White House poised to grant executive amnesty any day now despite the American people’s staunch opposition, on Sunday President Obama was asked about the many, many statements he made in the past about his inability to unilaterally change or ignore immigration law. His response was astonishingly brazen: “Actually, my position hasn’t changed. When I was talking to the advocates, their interest was in me, through executive action, duplicating the legislation that was stalled in Congress.”

This is a flagrant untruth: “In fact, most of the questions that were posed to the president over the past several years were about the very thing that he is expected to announce within a matter of days,” reported The New York Times. “[T]he questions actually specifically addressed the sorts of actions that he is contemplating now,” The Washington Post’s Fact Checker agreed, awarding President Obama the rare “Upside-Down Pinocchio,” which signifies “a major-league flip-flop.” Even FactCheck.org piled on.

President Obama is once again trying to mislead Americans, but he can’t run from what he’s said over and over (and over) again. Not only are Americans not stupid – they can read:

  1. “I take the Constitution very seriously. The biggest problems that we’re facing right now have to do with [the president] trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all. And that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m President of the United States of America.” (3/31/08)
  2. “We’ve got a government designed by the Founders so that there’d be checks and balances. You don’t want a president who’s too powerful or a Congress that’s too powerful or a court that’s too powerful. Everybody’s got their own role. Congress’s job is to pass legislation. The president can veto it or he can sign it. … I believe in the Constitution and I will obey the Constitution of the United States. We’re not going to use signing statements as a way of doing an end-run around Congress.” (5/19/08)
  3. “Comprehensive reform, that’s how we’re going to solve this problem. … Anybody who tells you it’s going to be easy or that I can wave a magic wand and make it happen hasn’t been paying attention to how this town works.” (5/5/10)
  4. “[T]here are those in the immigrants’ rights community who have argued passionately that we should simply provide those who are [here] illegally with legal status, or at least ignore the laws on the books and put an end to deportation until we have better laws. … I believe such an indiscriminate approach would be both unwise and unfair. It would suggest to those thinking about coming here illegally that there will be no repercussions for such a decision. And this could lead to a surge in more illegal immigration. And it would also ignore the millions of people around the world who are waiting in line to come here legally. Ultimately, our nation, like all nations, has the right and obligation to control its borders and set laws for residency and citizenship.  And no matter how decent they are, no matter their reasons, the 11 million who broke these laws should be held accountable.” (7/1/10)
  5. “I do have an obligation to make sure that I am following some of the rules. I can’t simply ignore laws that are out there. I’ve got to work to make sure that they are changed.” (10/14/10)
  6. “I am president, I am not king. I can’t do these things just by myself. We have a system of government that requires the Congress to work with the Executive Branch to make it happen. I’m committed to making it happen, but I’ve got to have some partners to do it. … The main thing we have to do to stop deportations is to change the laws. … [T]he most important thing that we can do is to change the law because the way the system works – again, I just want to repeat, I’m president, I’m not king. If Congress has laws on the books that says that people who are here who are not documented have to be deported, then I can exercise some flexibility in terms of where we deploy our resources, to focus on people who are really causing problems as a opposed to families who are just trying to work and support themselves. But there’s a limit to the discretion that I can show because I am obliged to execute the law. That’s what the Executive Branch means. I can’t just make the laws up by myself. So the most important thing that we can do is focus on changing the underlying laws.” (10/25/10)
  7. “America is a nation of laws, which means I, as the President, am obligated to enforce the law. I don’t have a choice about that. That’s part of my job. But I can advocate for changes in the law so that we have a country that is both respectful of the law but also continues to be a great nation of immigrants. … With respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations through executive order, that’s just not the case, because there are laws on the books that Congress has passed …. [W]e’ve got three branches of government. Congress passes the law. The executive branch’s job is to enforce and implement those laws. And then the judiciary has to interpret the laws. There are enough laws on the books by Congress that are very clear in terms of how we have to enforce our immigration system that for me to simply through executive order ignore those congressional mandates would not conform with my appropriate role as President.” (3/28/11)
  8. “I can’t solve this problem by myself. … [W]e’re going to have to have bipartisan support in order to make it happen. … I can’t do it by myself. We’re going to have to change the laws in Congress, but I’m confident we can make it happen.” (4/20/11)
  9. “I know some here wish that I could just bypass Congress and change the law myself.  But that’s not how democracy works.  See, democracy is hard.  But it’s right. Changing our laws means doing the hard work of changing minds and changing votes, one by one.” (4/29/11)
  10. “Sometimes when I talk to immigration advocates, they wish I could just bypass Congress and change the law myself. But that’s not how a democracy works. What we really need to do is to keep up the fight to pass genuine, comprehensive reform. That is the ultimate solution to this problem. That’s what I’m committed to doing.” (5/10/11)
  11. “I swore an oath to uphold the laws on the books …. Now, I know some people want me to bypass Congress and change the laws on my own. Believe me, the idea of doing things on my own is very tempting. I promise you. Not just on immigration reform. But that’s not how our system works. That’s not how our democracy functions. That’s not how our Constitution is written.” (7/25/11)
  12. “So what we’ve tried to do is within the constraints of the laws on the books, we’ve tried to be as fair, humane, just as we can, recognizing, though, that the laws themselves need to be changed. … The most important thing for your viewers and listeners and readers to understand is that in order to change our laws, we’ve got to get it through the House of Representatives, which is currently controlled by Republicans, and we’ve got to get 60 votes in the Senate. … Administratively, we can’t ignore the law. … I just have to continue to say this notion that somehow I can just change the laws unilaterally is just not true.  We are doing everything we can administratively.  But the fact of the matter is there are laws on the books that I have to enforce.  And I think there’s been a great disservice done to the cause of getting the DREAM Act passed and getting comprehensive immigration passed by perpetrating the notion that somehow, by myself, I can go and do these things.  It’s just not true. … We live in a democracy.  You have to pass bills through the legislature, and then I can sign it.  And if all the attention is focused away from the legislative process, then that is going to lead to a constant dead-end. We have to recognize how the system works, and then apply pressure to those places where votes can be gotten and, ultimately, we can get this thing solved.” (9/28/11)

In June 2012, President Obama unilaterally granted deferred action for childhood arrivals (DACA), allowing “eligible individuals who do not present a risk to national security or public safety … to request temporary relief from deportation proceedings and apply for work authorization.” He then argued that he had already done everything he could legally do on his own:

  1. “Now, what I’ve always said is, as the head of the executive branch, there’s a limit to what I can do. Part of the reason that deportations went up was Congress put a whole lot of money into it, and when you have a lot of resources and a lot more agents involved, then there are going to be higher numbers. What we’ve said is, let’s make sure that you’re not misdirecting those resources. But we’re still going to, ultimately, have to change the laws in order to avoid some of the heartbreaking stories that you see coming up occasionally. And that’s why this continues to be a top priority of mine. … And we will continue to make sure that how we enforce is done as fairly and justly as possible. But until we have a law in place that provides a pathway for legalization and/or citizenship for the folks in question, we’re going to continue to be bound by the law. … And so part of the challenge as President is constantly saying, ‘what authorities do I have?’” (9/20/12)
  2. “We are a nation of immigrants. … But we’re also a nation of laws. So what I’ve said is, we need to fix a broken immigration system. And I’ve done everything that I can on my own[.]” (10/16/12)
  3. “I’m not a king. I am the head of the executive branch of government. I’m required to follow the law. And that’s what we’ve done. But what I’ve also said is, let’s make sure that we’re applying the law in a way that takes into account people’s humanity. That’s the reason that we moved forward on deferred action. Within the confines of the law we said, we have some discretion in terms of how we apply this law.” (1/30/13)
  4. “I’m not a king. You know, my job as the head of the executive branch ultimately is to carry out the law.  And, you know, when it comes to enforcement of our immigration laws, we’ve got some discretion. We can prioritize what we do. But we can’t simply ignore the law. When it comes to the dreamers, we were able to identify that group and say, ‘These folks are generally not a risk. They’re not involved in crime. … And so let’s prioritize our enforcement resources.’ But to sort through all the possible cases of everybody who might have a sympathetic story to tell is very difficult to do. This is why we need comprehensive immigration reform. To make sure that once and for all, in a way that is, you know, ratified by Congress, we can say that there is a pathway to citizenship for people who are staying out of trouble, who are trying to do the right thing, who’ve put down roots here. … My job is to carry out the law. And so Congress gives us a whole bunch of resources. They give us an order that we’ve got to go out there and enforce the laws that are on the books.  … If this was an issue that I could do unilaterally I would have done it a long time ago. … The way our system works is Congress has to pass legislation. I then get an opportunity to sign it and implement it.” (1/30/13)
  5. “This is something I’ve struggled with throughout my presidency. The problem is that I’m the president of the United States, I’m not the emperor of the United States. My job is to execute laws that are passed. And Congress right now has not changed what I consider to be a broken immigration system. And what that means is that we have certain obligations to enforce the laws that are in place even if we think that in many cases the results may be tragic.” (2/14/13)
  6. “I think that it is very important for us to recognize that the way to solve this problem has to be legislative. I can do some things and have done some things that make a difference in the lives of people by determining how our enforcement should focus. … And we’ve been able to provide help through deferred action for young people …. But this is a problem that needs to be fixed legislatively.” (7/16/13)
  7. “My job in the executive branch is supposed to be to carry out the laws that are passed. Congress has said ‘here is the law’ when it comes to those who are undocumented, and they’ve allocated a whole bunch of money for enforcement. And, what I have been able to do is to make a legal argument that I think is absolutely right, which is that given the resources that we have, we can’t do everything that Congress has asked us to do. What we can do is then carve out the DREAM Act folks, saying young people who have basically grown up here are Americans that we should welcome. … But if we start broadening that, then essentially I would be ignoring the law in a way that I think would be very difficult to defend legally. So that’s not an option. … What I’ve said is there is a there’s a path to get this done, and that’s through Congress.” (9/17/13)
  8. “[I]f, in fact, I could solve all these problems without passing laws in Congress, then I would do so. But we’re also a nation of laws. That’s part of our tradition. And so the easy way out is to try to yell and pretend like I can do something by violating our laws. And what I’m proposing is the harder path, which is to use our democratic processes to achieve the same goal that you want to achieve. … It is not simply a matter of us just saying we’re going to violate the law. That’s not our tradition. The great thing about this country is we have this wonderful process of democracy, and sometimes it is messy, and sometimes it is hard, but ultimately, justice and truth win out.” (11/25/13)
  9. “I am the Champion-in-Chief of comprehensive immigration reform. But what I’ve said in the past remains true, which is until Congress passes a new law, then I am constrained in terms of what I am able to do. What I’ve done is to use my prosecutorial discretion, because you can’t enforce the laws across the board for 11 or 12 million people, there aren’t the resources there.  What we’ve said is focus on folks who are engaged in criminal activity, focus on people who are engaged in gang activity. Do not focus on young people, who we’re calling DREAMers …. That already stretched my administrative capacity very far. But I was confident that that was the right thing to do. But at a certain point the reason that these deportations are taking place is, Congress said, ‘you have to enforce these laws.’ They fund the hiring of officials at the department that’s charged with enforcing.  And I cannot ignore those laws any more than I could ignore, you know, any of the other laws that are on the books. That’s why it’s so important for us to get comprehensive immigration reform done this year.” (3/6/14)
  10. “I think that I never have a green light [to push the limits of executive power].  I’m bound by the Constitution; I’m bound by separation of powers.  There are some things we can’t do. Congress has the power of the purse, for example. … Congress has to pass a budget and authorize spending. So I don’t have a green light. … My preference in all these instances is to work with Congress, because not only can Congress do more, but it’s going to be longer-lasting.” (8/6/14)

President Obama should listen to President Obama, drop his plan to “expand the authority of the executive branch into murky, uncharted territory,” and work with Congress rather than insisting on his stubborn, “my way or the highway” approach.

– See more at: http://www.speaker.gov/general/22-times-president-obama-said-he-couldn-t-ignore-or-create-his-own-immigration-law#sthash.E8n1WgmO.dpuf

**

November 20, 2014, at 8:00 PM, EST, Barack Obama is announcing his Emperor Immigration plan by abusing his authority.

Millions will be touched by his White House declaration being eligible for all entitlement programs regardless of what Congressman Gutierrez and Congresswoman Jackson Lee have to say on the matter.

The timing of this event which was released on Facebook is no accident. The White House is working diligently to change the media headlines fro Jonathan Gruber and Obamacare to something else where he once again assumes control of the media and his agenda. He knows full well that the mid-term elections spoke against his platform and administration, this is retribution.

Allowing Some Illegal Immigrants to Stay Abuses Prosecutorial Discretion

Elizabeth Price Foley

Elizabeth Price Foley is a professor of constitutional law at Florida International University College of Law and the author of “The Tea Party: Three Principles.”

November 18, 2014

In 2012, the Obama administration issued a policy exempting from deportation about 1 million young, illegal immigrants who came to the United States as children.

The president reportedly is considering an expansion of this policy, exempting an estimated 5 million to 6 million more illegal immigrants from deportation. The proffered legal justification is “prosecutorial discretion,” yet this label is immaterial.

Prosecutorial discretion allows an executive officer to decline prosecution on a case-by-case basis when there’s insufficient evidence or resources to do so. A U.S. attorney, for example, might prioritize prosecution of drug violations involving larger quantities, leaving smaller quantities to state prosecutors. Similarly, a U.S. attorney might decline to pursue charges when witnesses or other evidence aren’t strong.

But would it be prosecutorial discretion if the president instructed U.S. attorneys to prosecute only heroin cases, and ignore other drugs prohibited by federal law, such as cocaine, P.C.P. or methamphetamine? What if the president instructed U.S. attorneys not to prosecute any drug case where the arrestee was under age 31, had no felony convictions and was a high school graduate? Most people would think such acts — particularly the creation of entirely new categories of exemptions — would go well beyond prosecutorial discretion, constitute a rewriting of the law and violate the president’s constitutional duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

There’s no logical stopping point to the prosecutorial justification underlying President Obama’s immigration policies. Presidents could simply decide not to enforce entire sections of the Clean Air Act, tax code or labor laws, or exempt entire categories of people — defined unilaterally by the president — on the assertion that those laws are “unfair” and there aren’t enough resources to go around. The president would have power to grant a “privilege” or exemption from any federal law, defying the plain language those laws and the will of the people’s Congress.

While several presidents — both Republican and Democrat — have used prosecutorial discretion to temporarily delay deportation in the face of wars (Nicaragua, Kuwait), hurricanes or earthquakes (El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras) and other discrete natural and political catastrophes, no other president has claimed the constitutional authority to ignore immigration law because he believes it’s unfair as a matter of permanent national policy.

At some point, the discretion not to prosecute a law becomes a failure to faithfully execute it. Whether President Obama’s immigration policies have crossed that line will be a matter for both courts and the American people to judge.