Republicans should not confirm any nominee from President Barack Obama until he reverses a planned executive action to grant executive amnesty to up to 5 million illegal immigrants, says Sen. Ted Cruz.
The Texas Republican said Wednesday on
Fox News Channel's "The Kelly File" that once Republicans take over the Senate in January they should refuse to confirm any presidential appointees, judicial or executive, except for vital national security positions.
He also laid out a two-point plan of attack in an op-ed for
Politico on Wednesday.
Cruz said Congress also should use its power of the purse to deny funding for the president's top priorities. Congress should systemically pass appropriations funding the Department of Defense and other vital departments, then pass appropriations with riders limiting the power of the president to spend money on "illegal amnesty," he said.
Cruz called it "a moment of testing," and warned that Congress will lose its authority if it doesn't act. It is "incumbent on Republicans in Congress to use every single constitutional tool we have to defend the rule of law, to rein in a president."
Obama said he plans to
announce his actions at 8 p.m. Thursday.
"President Obama was correct: his policies were on the ballot across the nation in 2014. The elections were a referendum on amnesty, and the voters soundly rejected it. There was no ambiguity," Cruz wrote in Politico.
Obama is defiant and angry at the American people, Cruz said.
"If he acts by executive diktat, President Obama will not be acting as a president, he will be acting as a monarch," he wrote.
The Constitution requires compromise between the branches, Cruz said, but "a monarch decrees, dictates, and rules through fiat power, which is what President Obama is attempting."
"There is not in recent times any parallel for a president repudiated by the voters standing up and essentially telling the voters, 'Go jump in the lake,'" Cruz said.
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