[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 12]
[House]
[Page 17149]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                AMERICA'S SYSTEM OF CHECKS AND BALANCES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Poe of Texas). The Chair recognizes the 
gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Byrne) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BYRNE. Mr. Speaker, I want to ask for a moment that my colleagues 
imagine a situation. Imagine a few years down the road that a 
Republican President announces he has instructed the Justice Department 
to no longer enforce the Clean Air Act, that he has told the Justice 
Department to no longer prosecute violations of the Clean Air Act.
  My colleagues on the other side of the aisle would rise up with 
frustration and indignation. They would say the President has failed to 
faithfully execute the laws passed by Congress, as he has been 
constitutionally required to do, and they would be right to do so.
  Mr. Speaker, that is exactly what is happening in our country today. 
President Obama has chosen unilaterally not to enforce our Nation's 
longstanding immigration laws. He has made this decision without any 
consultation with Congress and entirely on his own.
  Think for a moment about the precedent this action sets: that a 
President can alter longstanding law simply through an executive memo 
and his words, a President can simply say that he is not going to 
enforce the law. That would be frightening to all Americans, regardless 
of political belief.
  Let's be clear what this action is not. It is not prosecutorial 
discretion.
  No one doubts that the President has prosecutorial discretion. But 
this goes far beyond that power and enters into new territory that, 
frankly, has never before been touched.
  I believe this issue was settled long ago, before our country was 
even founded. You see, in the 17th century in Britain, during this big 
fight between the King of England and Parliament, the King said that he 
had prerogative powers, the ability to override Parliament. And there 
were battles. There were wars in Britain about how this was going to be 
settled. And the Parliament determined, in consultation with the 
courts, that the King couldn't, on his own, do that, that he couldn't 
just simply say, I am going to dispense with the laws or suspend their 
operations for a period of time.
  Our Founding Fathers knew this history well, and when they put 
together the Constitution of our country, in article II, they had that 
in their minds when they gave to the President the obligation--not the 
option--to faithfully execute the laws, all the laws of the United 
States, regardless of whether the President agrees with those laws or 
not.
  I would say that this type of executive action is clearly not what 
the Founders had in mind when they drafted our Constitution. The main 
overriding goal of our forefathers was to prevent the executive from 
becoming too powerful, and they went to great efforts to ensure a 
strong system of checks and balances.
  President Obama's executive action runs in the face of how our 
government was designed to operate. Let's also remember that earlier 
this year, President Obama said his policies--all of them--would be on 
the ballot in the mid-term elections. And the American people went to 
the polls and soundly rejected the President's policies. They made 
clear they were not supportive of more unilateral executive action. 
They wanted us to work together.

                              {time}  1230

  As a Congress, we warned the President not to go forward with this 
executive action.
  Mr. Speaker, we need a solution to our Nation's immigration problem, 
but by using executive action, the President has made finding common 
ground far more difficult.
  Mr. Speaker, I believe this House should rise above the actions of 
the President, and early next year, we should send the President real 
border security legislation, much like the border security legislation 
we passed in this House this past summer, yet the Senate wouldn't even 
take up.
  This House should pass legislation to update and fix the worker visa 
program. This House should pass legislation to put in place E-Verify 
for all employers. This House should pass legislation to tighten 
internal security. Then, and only then, when we go through all of those 
pieces of legislation, should we even begin to discuss what we are 
going to do about the millions of people who are in this country 
illegally.
  You see, Mr. Speaker, the more the President acts outside the bounds 
of his powers, the harder it becomes to actually achieve a solution. It 
leads me to wonder: Does President Obama actually want a long-term, 
lasting solution to immigration? His actions imply otherwise.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask the President to rethink his approach to the 
immigration debate. I urge him to abandon this ill-conceived executive 
action and, instead, to come to the table and work with the Republicans 
and Democrats in the Congress and both Houses to find together the 
commonsense solutions that we need to find for these problems.
  We are capable of doing that. That is how our Founders intended our 
government to operate, and anything other than that is a disservice to 
the American people.

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