If President Obama moves forward with executive amnesty it would send the country into a “constitutional crisis” that would require Republicans have all possible tools at their disposal to confront it, according to Iowa Republican Steve King.
“Anything that unconstitutionally and illegally legalizes millions of people, is something there will be no pretense left that the president is restrained by anything,” King explained in an interview with Breitbart News.
King said such action would be “an emergency for the United State Congress” that would require an emergency session of Congress, if Congress is in recess when Obama moves forward with his executive actions.
The Iowa Republican said that the first order of business for Congress, should Obama move forward with executive amnesty, would be a resolution rejecting the action and call upon the Senate to do the same.
“It would express the rejection of the United States Congress — the House of Representatives at a minimum — it would express out rejection of the President’s unconstitutional executive edict and set the stage for the next series of debates, which is how do we deal with the leverage we have in front of us legislatively,” King said.
Of the concerns about a possible government shutdown if Republicans decide to use the continuing resolution — which temporarily funds the government — as leverage against the President’s executive orders, King pointed out that such concerns have been ginned up by Democrats trying to raise campaign funds.
He continued on to say, however, that Republicans have tools that could be used to take on Obama’s executive actions, including through the power of the purse.
“We’re talking about a scenario with an urgent Constitutional crisis. Not something we can — let’s say put our finger into the wind, poll test, strategize, we’ll get to it later, right now we don’t want to have an argument because of an election. We’re talking about a constitutional crisis that the president would be throwing this nation in that we have never seen in the centuries of America,” King said when asked about the potential political pitfalls of using the continuing resolution to take on the President’s executive orders.
According to King, the American people will be outraged if Obama does move forward with executive amnesty.
“Please anticipate the American people will feel this viscerally and there will be a powerful reaction against those who want to go along with the President,” he said.
He added that the crisis would be so acute that it would need to be dealt with swiftly.
King left the door open, however, for supporting a continuing resolution that does not take on Obama’s executive actions, so long as it was a very short term measure.
“Maybe if the president hasn’t acted and when we’re sitting in Congress on the second or third week of September we could shorten the CR up so we could tighten the leash up on the president as far as the temptation to throw us into that Constitutional crisis,” King said. “That’s something to think about.”
He added that Obama’s public statements would play into his considerations as well.
“If we would make a public promise and commitment not to throw this nation into a constitutional crisis for a period of time, I’d be fairly open to a relatively clean CR that would conform to such a statement,” King said. “But with the president out there waving his cell phone and his ink pen at us it would be foolish for us to pass a CR that would extend the funding of the government into the next Congress because then he would have before or after the election at his option.”
“We should not give the president a blank check to pick his timing to throw us into a constitutional crisis,” he said.
When asked if King would support using the funding measure against Obama’s executive actions should he take them before the election king responded, “I would not set my tool box on the side of the well with only two or three tools and have to throw them all down the well.”
“I’m not throwing any of the tools down the well,” he said.
King added that if or when the President takes executive action the American people should urge their members of Congress to act “to use the tools they have to use to save this country from the constitutional crisis the president is repeatedly promising he will throw us into.”
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.