On Thursday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) accused Senate Democrats of meowing like “kitty cats” and enabling President Barack Obama to enact lawless executive actions like no other president before him.
In a colloquy on the Senate floor with Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) opposing Obama’s desire to unilaterally grant more amnesty to millions of more illegal immigrants, Cruz said “one of the most troubling aspects of the Obama presidency has been the persistent pattern of lawlessness.”
After saying it is unprecedented to have a president so “brazenly ignore the rule of law” on a host of issues from Obamacare to immigration, Cruz said it is “equally unprecedented to have the Senate lie down and meow like kitty cats” while Obama “confuses his pen and and his phone for the constitutional process of lawmaking.”
Citing liberal law professor Jonathan Turley, who recently wrote that Obama is the “embodiment of the imperial president” and someone “Richard Nixon always wished he could be,” Cruz said abuse of power by a president is not a new phenomenon, but the absence of confrontation in Congress in the face of it is.
He mentioned that Democrats and Republicans “decried Richard Nixon’s abuse of power,” which led to his resignation. Cruz reminded Senators that he and the state of Texas took on President George W. Bush in Medellin and won a 6-3 Supreme Court decision in a case that preserved U.S. sovereignty. And he emphasized that when Obama abused his powers with recess appointments, the Supreme Court unanimously struck them down as unconstitutional.
Yet, Cruz noted, not even Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has stood up to Obama, especially on immigration. Cruz said that Reid is someone who should have “some interest in the institutional credibility” of the Senate. The Texas Senator lamented that Democrats used to have “lions of the Senate”–like the late Sens. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Robert Byrd (D-WV)–“who prided themselves on defending this institution.”
And he reiterated that what is “truly unprecedented” is that there are no Senate Democrats, even on the immigration issue that is toxic to Democrats running for reelection in red states, who have said, “enough is enough.”
Noting that he was still hopeful that at some point a Senate Democrat would listen to their constituents, the Constitution, and the rule of law, Cruz said he understands that Democrats and the mainstream media do not want to call out Obama on his lawlessness because they agree with him and his policies. Cruz said the mentality is, “he’s our guy. We kinda got to back our guy.”
But Cruz warned that Obama will not always be president, and there will come a time when a Republican sits in the White House again. He said if Obama has the authority that he is claiming on executive actions, then a Republican president will have that power too.
Cruz has introduced legislation that would prohibit Obama from expanding his temporary amnesty program to future illegal immigrants, change a 2008 law to make it easier to deport illegal immigrants from countries other than Mexico and Canada, and reimburse states and local governments for actions they have taken to deal with the illegal immigrant children and secure the border.
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