The Constitutional Crisis

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, the constitutional issues involving the
President's executive orders on amnesty far transcend the issue of
illegal immigration. The President's action strikes at the very heart
of our separation of powers. The Constitution reserves to Congress
alone the power to enact and alter law, and it charges the President
with the responsibility to faithfully execute those laws.

If the President can seize legislative power in this manner and then
boast to an audience that he, himself, has changed the law, then the
separation of powers becomes meaningless, and our constitutional
Republic will have crossed a very bright line that separates a nation
of laws from the unhappy societies where rulers boast that the ``law is
in their mouths.''

If this precedent stands, every succeeding President, Republican and
Democrat, will cite it as authority to make or alter law by decree.
This cannot be allowed to happen.

The question occurs: What can the House do?

Well, it took its first step last week by passing H.R. 5759 that
declares the President's action unconstitutional and null and void.
This was a symbolic act since the bill is subject to Presidential veto,
but it was a warning that the President should have heeded. Obviously,
he has not.

What else can the Congress do?

One of the fundamental checks held by Congress is the power of
appropriation. It can close the purse by forbidding the use of Federal
funds to proceed with this unconstitutional act.

I realize that is a very difficult thing to do with a dysfunctional
Senate, but a temporary funding measure into January or February would
protect us against the prospect of a government shutdown while we try
to engage the Senate to rise in defense of the Constitution. And if the
Democratic Senate will not defend our Constitution, and I am afraid
that is a strong possibility, a few weeks from now the Republican
Senate certainly will.

Why in the world would we want to lock in Federal spending through
next September that reflects the priorities of the Democratic Senate
that voters just thoroughly repudiated last month? Why in the world
would we want to so greatly weaken our position to insist on the
complete defunding of the President's unconstitutional act in the next
congressional session just 3 weeks hence?

Meanwhile, it is imperative that the House take every action
available to engage the Supreme Court to resolve this constitutional
crisis. Several States have already filed suit, and the House needs to
join them. In addition, the House needs to vote as an institution to
challenge this act directly. This is too important to be treated as an
afterthought on current litigation over ObamaCare. It needs to be voted
on separately, unequivocally, and now.

Since the earliest days of our Republic, the Supreme Court has
invalidated legislative acts that conflicted with the Constitution. Now
it must be called upon to invalidate an executive act that strikes at
the very core of our Constitution. Regardless of the ideologies of
individual Justices, I cannot believe that any of them would sit idly
by as the Executive seizes such fundamental powers from the legislative
branch.

On behalf of the House, the Speaker announced last month that we
would fight this act tooth and nail. To adjourn tomorrow, having taken
only a symbolic vote, while abandoning our actual powers to challenge
this act undermines the credibility of the House majority.

Elements on the extreme left argue that this act was justified due to
congressional inaction over immigration reform. They fault the House
for not adopting a Senate immigration measure, but they forget the
House passed a strong immigration bill this summer and the Senate
refused to consider it.

Since when has congressional disagreement over legislation been
license for the President to legislate himself? This argument abandons
the Constitution and the rule of law for the expediency of one-man
rule. We should recognize such arguments for what they are: the
authoritarianism of the extreme left. We should reject these arguments
and those who make them.

Mr. Speaker, the Roman Republic died when Julius Caesar seized the
legislative authority of the Roman Senate. Repeated acts of usurpation
went unchallenged until the constitutional structure of the Republic
simply disintegrated.

Let that not be the epitaph of the American Republic. Of this crisis,
let history record that men and women of good will on both sides of the
aisle joined together to defend the Constitution that they swore to
uphold, and that this generation passed that Constitution and all of
the freedoms it has preserved, intact and inviolate, to the many
generations of Americans who followed.

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