President Barack Obama opened "Pandora's box for every president in the future" with his executive order on immigration, former Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Rick Santorum told CNN Sunday, and he hopes that lawmakers from both parties respond strongly to his actions.
The action, Santorum told
"State of the Union" correspondent Gloria Borger, allows future presidents to say "'you know, Congress, if you're not going to work with me, then I'm just going to go and not enforce the law and go beyond that. Not enforce the law and I'm going to actually create new law."
And Santorum, a former presidential candidate who admitted Sunday that he's doing "everything consistent with a run for 2016" but hasn't "made any final decisions," is hoping for Republicans to take quick action with their lawsuit against Obama.
On Friday,
House Republicans filed a lawsuit, saying Obama unlawfully delayed the health care law's requirement that many employers provide health care coverage for their workers.
But even though the long-threatened lawsuit came the morning after Obama's prime-time television speech on immigration, the issue is not addressed in the legal action.
Santorum said Sunday that Republicans should also "go right to it" and sue Obama through the Supreme Court.
"Hopefully they can get an expedited hearing on something of this significance," said Santorum.
He said that while some people have talked impeachment and others censure, overall "this is a serious matter," as a hypothetical "President Lindsey Graham" could come to Washington and say "'I don't like the Endangered Species Act; I'm not going to enforce it.'"
There are hundred of laws Democrats don't like, said Santorum, but that's different from ordering that people who violate them not be prosecuted.
"What he [Obama] is saying is, I'm not going to prosecute any of them and, in fact, I'm going to go further and grant them status that they would rather not have," said Santorum. "That is rewriting law. That is a violation."
And with Obama's executive action, Santorum said as a former Senator and Representative, "the president has just slapped the face" of members of Congress by "saying we don't need you anymore."
He also questioned Obama's timing.
"The president has had two years with complete control of the House and Senate and never offered a bill, and then for all of a sudden to express outrage?" he said.
Meanwhile, immigration control is needed, as during the past 20 years, the United
States has had the largest wave of immigrants than in the history of the country, Santorum said.
But even though people need jobs, and the influx of immigrants may take up much of that work, "the president seems to not care about it...he says 'I care more about these people who came here illegally.'"
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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