President Obama wasted no time after his Democratic Party took what some have described as a "shellacking" in Tuesday's midterm elections to tell Americans that if Congress can't pass "immigration reform" to his satisfaction, he will go it alone with executive orders.
But one member of the U.S. Senate said Congress, which the GOP leads in both chambers, may have something to say about that.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., who won reelection Tuesday, said Congress has the power to stop such extraordinary maneuvers by a president.
In an interview Thursday with the Fox News Channel's Megyn Kelly, he said all Congress needs to do is "bar the expenditure of any money to carry out such a scheme, because it would be a very expensive scheme."
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He was considering the possibility that Obama would expand his "deferred action" program, which gives amnesty to young children brought illegally into the United States by their parents. There has been talk of Obama expanding the amnesty to the parents of those children or even beyond.
Sessions explained the deferred-action measure gave work authorizations to millions of illegal aliens, even though it was "contrary to what the laws of the U.S. are."
The authorization could be expanded to 6 million illegal aliens, said Sessions.
But Congress could block the funding needed for the program.
"We do that all the time," Sessions said. "For example, Guantanamo would have been closed a long time ago, except Congress barred the president from spending any money to close Guantanamo. That's what he wanted to do.
"Hundreds, thousands of legislative actions throughout the years have barred the executive branch from spending money to execute policies Congress does not want to fund. We can do that," he said.
Kelly asked if Congress would pursue impeachment if Obama went ahead with the executive orders.
Probably not, said Sessions.
"I think we've got plenty of tools, and we need every one of those tools," he said. "President Obama is decimating law enforcement in a host of ways. … This is just one of them."
Sessions was not alone in his perspective. National Review reported Arizona congressman Matt Salmon already was circulating a letter seeking a prohibition of any spending on Obama's "reported intentions to create work permits and green cards for undocumented immigrants currently in the United States."
Salmon said the orders "would be in direct violation of U.S. law."
"As you know, the Congress has the power of the purse and should use it as a tool to prevent the president from implementing policies that are contrary to our laws and the desire of the American people," he said.
WND reported this week Fox News commentator Charles Krauthammer, who once served as chief resident in psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, said while Obama is "seething" over his election losses and likely will do something "reckless" to punish Americans, impeachment is not the right path.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning Krauthammer was discussing with the Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly the Republican domination of Tuesday's midterm elections.
Obama, at a post-election news conference, denied Tuesday's results were a rejection of his policies.
"The principles that we're fighting for, the things that motivate me every single day and motivate my staff every day … those things aren't going to change," he said.
O'Reilly speculated that Obama is planning to "go out guns blazing."
"You're absolutely right," said Krauthammer, who also served a political speechwriter in the 1980s. "He's a strange combination of obliviousness and recklessness. It's as if he doesn't know what happened."
Now, Krauthammer warned, Obama is "going to sort of get his revenge on everybody by doing a reckless thing which is to legalize millions of illegal aliens, I would say, unconstitutionally, in a way that he knows is going to create a crisis."
Krauthammer said Republicans need to stay focused.
"This is time for Republicans to be very disciplined. They won the election because they were disciplined. They stayed on message. They made it a referendum on Obama," he said.
"And they won," he said. "What they have to do now is to go from being the party of no to the party with an agenda."
Krauthammer said a goal is to pass bills to help America, demonstrating how different the GOP majority is from Obama, and send them to the president.
"The prize here is not the impeachment of Obama and the curtailing of his term by three months. The prize is winning the White House in 2016 and changing the country," he said.
In a statement posted just after the election on Sessions' website, the senator responded to Obama's plan "to issue a unilateral executive amnesty."
"Congress has acted, and so have the American people," he said. "Republicans, and the voters who sent us here, rejected the Obama-Democrat legislation to give work permits to illegal immigrants and to surge already-record immigration rates. The president cannot, having had his policies defeated at the ballot box, impose them through executive decree."
Sessions said a Republican Congress "will defend itself and our citizens from these lawless actions."
"Surrendering to illegality is not an option. Democrats will have to choose sides; protect the president's agenda, or protect your constituents," he said.
"Americans do not want their borders erased. What they have asked for is an agenda that promotes higher wages, reforms government, eliminates failed programs, balances the budget, increases energy production, and protects their sovereignty."
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