Executive Actions

Floor Speech

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, a few weeks ago I wrote my colleagues a letter that had a serious front line about policies being executed, we are told, by the President that would seriously undermine the constitutional structure of our Republic and give to the President powers that would allow him to take powers he had never been given.

Subsequent to that, a George Washington law professor, Mr. Jonathan Turley, remarked during recent congressional testimony:

When President Obama pledged to circumvent Congress [he was referring to his State of the Union Address] he received rapturous applause from the very body that he was proposing to make practically irrelevant.

Professor Turley emphasized that the ``most serious violations, in my view, are various cases where he went to Congress, as in the immigration field, as in the health care field, asked for very specific things and was rejected and then decided just to order those on his own.''

He testified before a House committee. Professor Turley I think has been known as a Democrat. I think he said he supported President Obama's election. He is not a partisan person. He is an observer who has testified before Congress many times and is well respected, and that statement should cause concern on the part of every Member of Congress.

Is it so? Is it so that he asked for the very specific things that were rejected by Congress and he decided to just order them with his pen on his own?

The primary immigration action Professor Turley was referring to was the President's decision to implement the DREAM Act by fiat, providing administrative amnesty and work permits to an entire class of illegal immigrants.

Professor Turley described it as `` ..... the clear circumvention of Congress. And for Congress not to act in my view borders on self-loathing.''

Is that a serious comment? I think it is exactly right. He is exactly right on this. Has Congress no gumption at all?

Multiple news reports have now made it clear that the President is now considering an Executive immigration action on a scale so far and indeed beyond our own imagination. Here is how that action was described by the National Journal, a prestigious publication in our country. This is the poster. This is what the National Journal reported: ``President Plans To Expand Unilateral Executive Amnesty.''

Executive amnesty means the Chief Executive, the President, expanding Executive amnesty including work permits for illegal immigrants and visa overstays.

Obama made it clear he would press his executive powers to the limit.

I would say well beyond the limit, according to Professor Turley. The article continues:

He gave quiet credence to recommendations from La Raza and other immigration groups that between 5 million to 6 million adult illegal immigrants could be spared deportation under a similar form of deferred adjudication he ordered for the so-called Dreamers in June 2012.

The article is referring to the DREAM Act that the President executed. One of the things that I think is extremely important, colleagues, is that what they are suggesting is that 5 million to 6 million people will be given a document that basically provides them legal status in America. The article continues:

Obama has now ordered the Homeland Security and Justice departments to find-Ordered them to find--Executive authorities that could enlarge that non-prosecutorial umbrella by a factor of 10.

That is all with the DREAM Act. 10 times that which was done. Continuing:

Senior officials also tell me Obama wants to see what he can do with executive power to provide temporary legal status to undocumented adults.

This is 5 million to 6 million. That is what a factor of 10 means. That is maybe more than half of the people who are illegally in the country today. Congress has considered these matters at great length and Congress set the law as to how someone enters the country lawfully and how someone enters the country, in effect, unlawfully and what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.

The President is the chief law enforcement officer in America. The FBI, DEA, Border Patrol officers, ICE officers, Attorney General all work for him, and the leaders of those organizations serve at his pleasure. He can remove them at will if they don't carry out his policies.

He has ordered the Homeland Security and Justice Departments, to find Executive authorities--not to see if they could find them but to find them--because he has a policy he wants to carry out and Congress doesn't agree with him.

I will read another poster quoting Professor Turley. He talks about the danger, colleagues. This is dangerous.

Does anybody not respect this institution? Do we not respect the House of Representatives, the Senate? Have we become so partisan that we don't care what the President does to diminish Congress? Don't we have an institutional responsibility, a constitutional responsibility to defend the legitimate powers of Congress?

Sure, we can disagree sometimes, but this one is not a matter of disagreement, it seems to me. This is an overreach of dramatic proportions.

Professor Turley said:

The President's pledge to effectively govern alone is alarming, and what is most alarming is his ability to fulfill that pledge. When a president can govern alone, he can become a government unto himself, which is precisely the danger the framers sought to avoid.

Certainly they sought to avoid that. They were very suspicious and aware that the tendency of chief executive officers is to assume more power than they are given. So they created a strong Congress and they gave certain powers to Congress that could not be delegated to the executive branch.

Professor Turley, in his most recent testimony before the House Rules Committee--I believe last week--said:

What we're witnessing today is one of the greatest crises that members of this body will face ..... It has reached a constitutional tipping point that threatens a fundamental change in how our country is governed.

No matter what somebody thinks about immigration issues or health care issues, there are limits on what the President can do without Congress.

So the President says: Congress will not act; therefore, I have to act.

Have you ever heard that? They used to say Federal judges would say that. They would say: The legislature will not act. Governor King will not act. The court has to act.

That is not so. That is so bogus. If a Governor decides not to act, if a Congress decides not to act, if a State legislature decides not to act and do what some President would like to see done, that is a decision. It is every bit as real and firm a decision as if they had passed a law. If they are asked to pass a law and they say no, that is a decision reached through the legislative branch by people duly elected from all over this country who come to this Congress to pass laws.

I am very frustrated that my Democratic colleagues are not sufficiently concerned about it, and we certainly need more discussion from the loyal opposition, the Republicans on this question.

Do my Democratic colleagues express concern about it? Not that I have seen. They seem to celebrate it.

The newspaper, El Diario, quotes New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, saying:

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) said Friday that he has ``no doubt'' that President Barack Obama will deliver on his promise to take executive action on immigration despite the current attention on the unaccompanied minors crisis.

It goes on to be quoted there as saying:

One executive action that Senator Menendez and other Democrats are pushing for is the expansion of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which provides deportation reprieve and work permits to undocumented youth.

Colleagues, it is one thing to be less than vigorous in carrying out deportations as the law requires; it is quite another class of action to give people who are unlawfully in the country a document from the President that says you can work and stay in the country--to give them legal status when Congress has considered this and rejected it. It is beyond the power of the President.

I wrote a letter to my colleagues, Democrat and Republican, before this testimony about these planned executive actions that I had been reading about. I said they would amount to an-- ..... executive nullification of our borders as an enforceable national boundary, [guaranteeing] that the current illegal immigration disaster would only further worsen and destabilize.

We cannot provide continuous amnesty on a regular basis and ever expect everybody not to attempt to come to the country if they believe they, too, in a manner of years--maybe now even fewer years--will be rewarded for their unlawful act by being put on a path to citizenship or permanent status.

So I therefore make two requests today:

I believe any border legislation that is sent to the Senate by the House of Representatives should include specific language denying the President any funds to execute his planned work permits. Congress clearly has that power. We can appropriate or not appropriate money. We can say that money cannot be spent for this or that thing. So we have every right to say the President should not spend money delivering work permits to people whom Congress has declared to not be lawfully able to work in America. I believe the President's actions are in clear contravention of the law, and I feel strongly about that.

Second, I am calling on every Senate Democratic colleague to stand up and be counted. Senator Cruz has a bill that would stop this Presidential overreach. It is very simple. It lays out that we won't spend money providing legal documents to people unlawfully in the country as defined by the law of America and as defined by the Congress of the United States.

So I ask: Will you cosponsor Senator Cruz's bill, and let us defend our constituents? Or, will our congressional colleagues remain complicit in the nullification of our laws and basically the nullification of border enforcement?

I would make a final note on what we owe to the citizens of this country. President Obama's illegal work permits add to the already huge flow of lawful work permits issued by the Federal Government. Between 2000 and 2013, we lawfully issued almost 30 million work and immigration visas. To put that number in perspective, 30 million is about the entire population of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala combined.

This matter and our situation today are in disarray as a result of confused and politically driven thinking by this administration. It just is. I wish it weren't so, but it is. Obama administration officials have gone so far as to describe amnesty as a civil right. That is an argument against the very idea of a nation-state and the idea of a nation's borders. Of course there is, and can be, no civil right to enter a country unlawfully and then to demand lawful status and even citizenship. Of course there is not. How could this possibly be, that the Attorney General of the United States of America would assert that people have a constitutional right to enter unlawfully and be given amnesty? That is the kind of thinking which has got us into this fix, and it has encouraged the flow of unlawful immigration.

The actual legal rights that are being violated here today I suggest are the rights of the American citizens.

As Civil Rights Commission Member Peter Kirsanow warned, our African-American citizens often are the ones who are hurt the most, as well as recent immigrant arrivals and working Americans. What about their rights? They have sweat and bled and died for this country, been called on to serve and responded, paid their taxes, raised their children, tried to do the right thing day after day. What about their rights? What about the right of every citizen to the protections our immigration laws afford? Will no one rise to their defense?

We need an immigration policy that helps all residents--including millions of immigrants who have come to America. We want to help them rise into the middle class and above. We need rising wages, not falling wages. We can't help those living here today if we keep bringing in record numbers of new workers to compete for their jobs, to drive up unemployment, and then pull down wages. That is just a fact.

After decades of large-scale immigration, and with large illegal immigration flows in addition, we need to get serious and establish a principled policy of immigration and consistently enforce it, a policy that is honorable, that we can be proud of, and that serves the interests of all Americans--especially working Americans. These are the people who have made our country great. They deserve our attention and compassion, too. Middle America has been decent and right on this issue from the beginning.

For 40 years American people have called on Congress and called on their Presidents to create a lawful immigration system they can be proud of that serves the national interests and serves their interests. But what have they gotten? Nothing but more illegality and more demands for amnesty. The leaders of their country have not listened to them, and they aren't listening now. It appears to me the leaders of this country are not very interested in what the American people think.

The President plans to dramatically exceed his powers. It is the latest example of rejecting what the American people have asked for and it is a breathtaking violation of congressional power. It cannot be allowed to happen. We need to defend our Constitution, we need to defend the rule of law, and we need to defend the powers of Congress--and, at bottom, to defend legitimate rights, interests, and desires of the people who sent us here.

Mr. President, I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I know the Chair serves as a member of the Budget Committee, as I am the ranking Republican on that committee. We have gotten a CBO, Congressional Budget Office, analysis--our official scorekeeper of spending--on the part of the proposal the President has presented to spend $4.346 billion to deal with the Southwest border crisis. What CBO has done is provided its cost estimates of the President's recent supplemental request for the Southwest border.

Significantly, CBO's analysis suggests that only $25 million of the $4.346 billion request will be spent this year. This indicates clearly that the agencies are not in dire need of supplemental funding from this Congress, certainly not in the degree asked for.

Again, CBO's analysis suggests that only $25 million out of the $4.3 billion request will be spent this year. What does that mean? It means we ought to slow down. There is no basis to demand a $4.3 billion increase in emergency spending. Every dollar borrowed--because we are already in debt. To spend $4 billion more is to borrow every penny of it. We should not do that until we find out more about what is happening at our border.

Twenty-five million dollars is a lot of money in itself. The Homeland Security and other agencies, Health and Human Services, have monies they can apply to these problems.

I am not saying no money is needed now, because we want to treat children and be helpful and treat them in a humanitarian way and a compassionate way. But we don't need $4 billion. That is clear. And we are not to be doing that. Thank goodness, the House of Representatives is looking at it carefully. They need to reject this request out of hand.

Colleagues, the fundamental problem here is that when the President of the United States did his DACA bill, when he did his DREAM Act Executive order, what did he do? He basically said: We are not going to deport young people. Then we began to see this surge of young people coming to America, and we are not deporting them effectively. They are being taken in, turned over to HHS, found housing, turned over to whoever comes and picks them up even if they are not citizens and not lawfully here. They are not being deported. So more have come in record numbers.

I guess, first of all, the very idea that we would spend--I guess for that project--$3.7 billion is a stunning amount of money. It is a huge amount of money at a time when we don't need to be borrowing money more than we have to. So I believe and would say to our colleagues, this plan does not call for the expenditure of money this year except for $25 million, and therefore we are not in a crisis that demands us to produce billions of dollars in revenue for this President to continue to carry out policies that only encourage more people to come to America and cost us even more in the time to come.

Mr. President, I thank the Chair and I yield the floor.

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