[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 114 (Monday, July 21, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4641-S4643]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
EXECUTIVE ACTIONS
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
[[Page S4642]]
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.
[[Page S4643]]
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.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
____________________