Forked tongue syndrome?
President Obama irked Republicans and his past self this week by telling CBS he would bypass Congress and use executive action on illegal immigration, potentially ordering a 10-point amnesty plan as early as next week.
CNN reported that the move would likely include an expansion of deferred deportation for undocumented children to their families, and Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Obama is “nearing a final decision” on what to do. Speaker John Boehner’s (R., Ohio) office called the potential actions “executive amnesty.”
Obama could look back on statements from his first campaign and first term about what he can and can’t do as head of the Executive Branch.
“I take the Constitution very seriously,” he told a Pennsylvania town hall in 2008. “The biggest problems that we’re facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the Executive Branch and not go through Congress at all, and that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m President of the United States of America.”
In 2011, he told a Univision town hall that there “are enough laws on the books by Congress that are very clear in terms of how we have to enforce our immigration system.” To ignore those congressional mandates through executive order, Obama said, would “not conform with my appropriate role as president.”
“True revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism. They cut their hair, put on suits and infiltrate the system from within.” ~ Saul Alinsky
