FOX "Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace" - Transcript: Executive Orders

Interview

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WALLACE: Mike Tobin reporting from Ferguson -- Mike, thanks for that. With the stroke of a pen, President Obama moved this week to shield some 4 million illegal immigrants from being deported. But Republicans say he's exceeded his constitutional powers, and they are planning their response.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz is one of the sharpest critics of the president's action.

Senator Cruz, welcome back to "Fox News Sunday."

SEN. TED CRUZ, R-TEXAS, JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: Good morning, Chris. Always good to be with you.

WALLACE: Senator, I want to separate policy from process, what the president did, from how he did it. The president says that he's using his prosecutorial discretion to go after the bad guys and not to go after parents of people who are in this country legally. Here's how he explained it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: Felons, not families. Criminals, not children. Gang members, not a mom who's working hard to provide for her kids. We'll prioritize, just like law enforcement does every day.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Senator, what's wrong with that policy?

CRUZ: Well, the notion that this is just prosecutorial discretion is simply nonsense. The Constitution gives Congress the authority to establish our immigration laws. What the president announced this week is a wholesale refusal to follow our immigration laws, to enforce our immigration laws. Number one, for 4 million to 5 million people here illegally, he's promising to print up and give work authorization. Essentially, he's gotten in the job of counterfeiting immigration papers, because there's no legal authority to do what he's doing. He's simply giving worth authorization and claiming unilateral authority.

But, secondly, the memo that he put out -- not the speech, but the memo he put out to the Department of Homeland Security says they are not to enforce immigration laws other than for violent criminals and a few discreet categories, but for most of the 12 million people here illegally, the president is instructing the executive branch to no longer enforce the immigration laws. It is a stunning and sad display of a president declining to honor his constitutional obligation to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

WALLACE: Well, I want to pick up on that because we talk about policy. But I also want to talk about the process and the fact that the president is doing this by executive action. He says there is a long precedent for chief executives to do exactly that. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: The actions I'm taking are not only lawful, they're the kinds of actions taking by every single Republican president and every single Democratic president for the past half century.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Senator, Presidents Reagan and Bush 41 took executive action to grant legal status to about a million and a half people who are in this country illegally. What's the difference?

CRUZ: You know, as a matter of constitutional law, the claim the president just made there is frivolous, which I would note, he acknowledged 22 times over the last five years, over and over again, that he had no constitutional authority to do this, until suddenly he decided it would be politically beneficial to do so.

The difference between Reagan and Bush is both of them were working with Congress and implementing congressional statutes. Absolutely, Congress can change the immigration law and the president in the course of executing the immigration laws, can put congressional well into effect.

The difference here is this is not a president who wants to work with Congress. Rather, this is a president who is openly defying Congress.

And, you know, Chris, I actually can't put it any better than "Saturday Night Live" put it last night, where they reprised the old "Schoolhouse Rock", you remember how a bill becomes a law? And "Saturday Night Live" literally had the president pushing the bills down the steps of the Capitol, because we no longer need the steps in the Constitution for how we pass laws, because the president now is claiming unilateral authority the Constitution doesn't give him.

I'll tell you, the danger of that, Chris, is it's not just on the substance here. The substance is very damaging to working men and women across the country, but it's a far broader danger for anyone concerned about liberty, because if this president can impose his own immigration laws unilaterally, then the next president can impose his own laws, whether it's immigration, whether it's tax, whether it's labor, whether it's environmental --

WALLACE: Right.

CRUZ: -- we stop having a constitutional system of checks and balances that's protected our liberty, and we move just to unilateral executive authority. Essentially using the president's own word, it's the power of a monarch or an emperor.

WALLACE: Senator, the question then, of course, is how to respond, and there's quite a split within your party.

As I understand it, what you're saying is that the Republican should vote to fund the governments for all departments except one, and that is that you would attach a rider, an amendment, to funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which handles immigration, taking back or rescinding his executive action, and that the thought is if he vetoes that, he's responsible for shutting down the department.

The problem is that's almost exactly what you did with the government shutdown across the entire government in 2013 with Obamacare, and it backfired badly on your party.

CRUZ: Well, Chris, look, I'm going to suggest a very simple proposition. All across this country, Republicans campaigned, saying: if you elect a Republican Senate, we will stop President Obama's illegal amnesty.

My very simple suggestion to my colleagues and friends in the Republican Party is we need to honor what we said. We need to actually do what we said two weeks ago on the campaign trail.

Now, I've laid out a detailed, systematic plan --

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: Sir, because we have limited time, is that what you're saying you would do? You would attach a rider to funding for just the one Department of Homeland Security?

CRUZ: Chris, I've laid out a detailed, systematic plan for what Congress should do? We should use the constitutional checks and balances that we have to rein in the abuse of power of the executive.

Step number one that I have called for is the incoming majority leader should announce if the president implements this lawless amnesty, that the Senate will not confirm any executive or judicial nominees, other than vital national security positions, for the next two years, unless and until the president ends this lawless amnesty.

WALLACE: Sir, let me pick -- if I may, let me pick up on that.

(CROSSTALK)

CRUZ: That is an explicit authority given to the Senate.

WALLACE: If I may, let me pick up right on that, because -- are you saying the Senate should refuse to confirm Loretta Lynch, the president's new nominee for attorney general and thereby leave Eric Holder, who you don't like very much, in that position even longer?

CRUZ: Chris, what I'm saying is we should use the constitutional checks and balances we have to rein in the executive. You know, if the read the Federalist Papers, in the Federalist Papers, our Framers talked about a president who would behave like a monarch, that would rule by diktat and decree rather than following the Constitution --

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: Sir, I understand that. I'm asking a direct question, though. Would you -- would you block Loretta Lynch's confirmation as attorney general and leave Eric Holder in the job?

CRUZ: In my view, the majority leader should decline to bring to the floor of the Senate any nomination other than vital national security positions. Now, that is a serious and major step. It is a power the majority leader has, and nobody else has any ability to alter -- if the majority leader announced that, it would impose real consequences on the president and the administration.

WALLACE: All right. I --

CRUZ: And the second big check we've got, the second constitutional power we've got is the power of the purse, and we should fund one at a time the critical priorities of the federal government, but also use the power of the purse to attach riders. We've got to demonstrate that the campaign words Republicans used on the trail were more than just talk, that we're willing to honor our commitment.

WALLACE: But you're willing to shut down departments and you're willing to take the backlash? I mean, it didn't work very well with Obamacare, sir.

CRUZ: Well, let met point on you, you notice, at the time, you and a lot of folks in the press said what a disaster it was to stand up and fight on Obamacare. That it was going to cost Republicans the majority. It was going to cost seats.

Let me point out, we just had an historic election where we won. It's going to end up being nine seats in the Senate. We retired Harry Reid. We've got the biggest majority in the House since the 1920s. And the number one issue that candidates campaigned on was Obamacare.

Now, listen, it was a mistake for President Obama and Harry Reid to force a government shutdown, but it was not a mistake for Republicans to stand up and fight on Obamacare. And not only did the disaster that a lot of folks predicted not happen, it was the biggest victory we've had in a long time. Republicans need to actually do what we say we will do, and not just have a lot of empty smoke.

WALLACE: Senator Cruz, we're going to have to leave there. Thank you so much. Always a pleasure to talk with you, sir.

CRUZ: Always good to be with you, Chris.

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