President to address immigration in Thursday evening address
President Obama will address the nation tonight lay out the executive actions he’s taking to "fix our broken immigration system."
The president's address will be online at 8 p.m. Thursday at http://www.whitehouse.gov/live/president-obama-delivers-address-nation
According to the administration, "This is a step forward in the president’s plan to work with Congress on passing common-sense, comprehensive immigration reform. He laid out his principles for that reform two years ago in Del Sol High School in Las Vegas – and that’s where he’ll return on Friday to discuss why he is using his executive authority now, and why Republicans in Congress must act to pass a long-term solution to immigration reform.
"The Senate passed a bipartisan bill more than 500 days ago, and while the country waits for House Republicans to vote, the president will act – like the presidents before him – to fix our immigration system in the ways that he can."
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Meanwhile, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, responds at http://www.speaker.gov/general/22-times-president-obama-said-he-couldn-t-ignore-or-create-his-own-immigration-law
"With the White House poised to grant executive amnesty despite the American people’s staunch opposition, on Sunday President Obama was asked about the many, many statements he made in the past about his inability to unilaterally change or ignore immigration law. His response was astonishingly brazen: 'Actually, my position hasn’t changed. When I was talking to the advocates, their interest was in me, through executive action, duplicating the legislation that was stalled in Congress.'
"This is a flagrant untruth: 'In fact, most of the questions that were posed to the president over the past several years were about the very thing that he is expected to announce within a matter of days,” reported The New York Times.'
"President Obama is once again trying to mislead Americans, but he can’t run from what he’s said over and over (and over) again. Not only are Americans not stupid – they can read," Boehner said.
The speaker's website lists the following examples from Obama:
• “I take the Constitution very seriously. The biggest problems that we’re facing right now have to do with [the president] trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all. And that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m President of the United States of America.” (3/31/08)
• “We’ve got a government designed by the Founders so that there’d be checks and balances. You don’t want a president who’s too powerful or a Congress that’s too powerful or a court that’s too powerful. Everybody’s got their own role. Congress’s job is to pass legislation. The president can veto it or he can sign it. … I believe in the Constitution and I will obey the Constitution of the United States. We're not going to use signing statements as a way of doing an end-run around Congress.” (5/19/08)
• “Comprehensive reform, that's how we're going to solve this problem. … Anybody who tells you it's going to be easy or that I can wave a magic wand and make it happen hasn't been paying attention to how this town works.” (5/5/10)