Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Majority Leader John Boehner
There’s a simple way to stop President Obama from using executive orders to advance his radical agenda, and it’s not wielding “the power of the purse,” as the Republican congressional leadership contends, according to talk-host Michael Savage.
The issue is on the front-burner as Obama – expressing frustration with the lack of legislative movement on “immigration reform” – has defiantly vowed to issue an executive order that would allow up to 5 million illegal aliens avoid deportation.
Savage argues Republican have threatened to use the “power of the purse” before, and Obama has moved right ahead. The president issued, for example, an executive order in 2012 that effectively implemented his DREAM Act plan allowing young illegal aliens to remain in the U.S. indefinitely.
Savage told his listeners the new Republican-majority Congress has a weapon at its disposal, if it only is willing to deploy it.
“If the executive order is based on a statute, Congress can change the statute, thereby nullifying the order,” Savage said.
“Come January, the first day – instead of all the ceremony – call [Congress] back in session, go to power, go to the mats and change the statute. Day One,” he told his “Savage Nation” audience Thursday.
Michael Savage’s “Stop the Coming Civil War” is a call to defend th...
He noted that the only instance in which Congress could not nullify an order is if the president is acting according to an exclusive power granted to him by the Constitution.
“But Obama’s executive order on immigration is not such a case,” he said. “It is not constitutionally based. Congress has the power to repeal a presidential order or terminate the underlying authority on which the action is predicated.”
Savage cited a Congressional Research Service report from December 2011 outlining the authority Congress possesses to stop an executive order.
“Do I have to teach McConnell and Boehner what they can do?” he asked, referring to the newly elected Senate majority leader and the House speaker. “No. They know it. They just don’t want to do it.”
In his latest book, “Stop the Coming Civil War,” Savage writes that Republican congressional leaders “refuse to understand that they’re the victims of a master of legislative sleight-of-hand who has already taken over many governmental functions that should be handled by the other branches of our federal government.”
Savage said both McConnell and Boehner “have engaged in discussions with the president about a new immigration law that would effectively grant amnesty to the illegals already in the country.”
He lists in his book other actions Obama already has initiated by executive order.
They include unilaterally modifying Obamacare, bypassing the Senate to confirm nominees for federal posts and effectively eliminating the welfare work requirements established in the 1990s that have been instrumental in reducing welfare rolls.
