Barack Obama is the president, "not the emperor of the United States," and he has "no legal authority" to enact his executive order on immigration and amnesty, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said Monday.
"He has no legal authority to do this," the Republican governor said on Fox News' program "Fox & Friends." "He can't go beyond the bounds of the laws that stand in the United States today."
Wisconsin is one of
17 states involved in a lawsuit against the president's order, and Walker pointed out that Obama over the past several years has said himself that he did not have the legal authority to enact an order on immigration.
"What did he do two weeks after [Democrats were ] soundly defeated at the ballot box?" said Walker. "Instead of finding ways to work with the new Senate majority, he picks an issue that he clearly does not have the legal authority [on] and goes forward. This is someone who has gone from the audacity of hope to the audacity of the power grab."
Walker said he "got a kick" out of the recent
"Saturday Night Live" skit in which the show mocked Obama's action with a "Schoolhouse Rock" skit.
"Instead of following the rules, that a bill and idea goes to the Congress, the House, and the Senate, and then ultimately the president can either sign it or veto it before it becomes a law or doesn't become a law," Obama has "totally disregarded the Congress," said Walker.
But apparently, a frustrated president whose policies have cost his party gets "some sort of a clause in the Constitution to just disregard it?" said Walker. "Obviously that's not the case and I and other governors want to make sure that the courts, another separate branch of government, stands up and holds the president to this very standard, the standard that any person, man or woman, should be held to in this country."
Walker pointed out that he could not have come into office and said he was going to change collective bargaining, but had to go to the state Legislature to make changes, and Obama needs to do the same thing.
"Obviously back then it drew a lot of attention, but we did it the right way," said Walker. "If you want to make big, bold changes, you need to work, in this case, with the legislative branch, which is the Congress, to make those changes."
And Obama's action is "bigger than immigration," Walker contended.
"It's on any action out there," he said. "If you take and overstep your authority, you take authority away from your own branch of government because there is a careful balance the founders of this country put in place and we need to defend that."
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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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