If President Barack Obama carries through with his plan to take executive action on amnesty for illegal immigrants after the midterm elections, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan vows to use every weapon in the Republicans' congressional arsenal to stop him.
Speaking with Sean Hannity on Fox News, Ryan said he considers any such executive action to be "blatantly unconstitutional" and, should Republicans take control of the Senate, they intend to use their new-found power to stop Obama, either though economic blocks or by adding it to the Republicans' lawsuit against Obama,
The Daily Caller reports.
"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," Ryan told Hannity.
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"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.
"If he were to do something like that (executive action on amnesty), by the way, he’d put millions of people in legal limbo, poison the well for Congress, and do something that’s so blatantly unconstitutional. And so we’re telling the administration, ‘Don’t even think about doing this,'" Ryan said.
"It’s going around Congress. If you want 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."
Ryan's words echoed those of Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, who pledged on
Breitbart News, "We will do everything we can to make sure it doesn’t happen — defunding, going to court, injunction, you name it. It’s wrong. It's illegal. And for so many reasons, and just the basic fabric of this country, we can’t allow it to happen and we won’t let it happen."
Ryan told Fox News, "More importantly, because we don’t have the Senate, we don’t have the power of the purse. We’d like to exercise that more effectively, and if we can get the Senate, we can do that."
Should Republicans take the Senate, Ryan said, "We stop his agenda. We stop him from stacking the courts with liberal progressives that could never get a bipartisan vote — from stacking regulatory agencies with liberals that could never get a bipartisan vote.
"That's what getting the Senate does to begin with, but then we also give the president the luxury to actually make a decision or two — put bills on his desk, Keystone pipeline, securing the border, things that we pass out in the House that go nowhere because of [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid and the Senate.
"We passed over 380 bills dealing with things like border security, job security, energy policies, Keystone pipeline, and they go nowhere in the Senate. Three hundred eighty-plus bills sitting in the Senate collecting dust because Harry Reid won't pass them.
"If we get the Senate, then we can put those bills on his (Obama's) desk."
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