A Republican congressman on the House Judiciary panel that oversees immigration and border security told
Newsmax TV on Friday that President Barack Obama used a lie — Congress' supposed failure to act — to justify his executive grant of legal amnesty to millions of undocumented immigrants.
"He's lying to the American people when he says we haven't done anything," Rep. Raul Labrador, an Idaho Republican and former immigration lawyer, told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner.
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In a televised address on Thursday night, the president
delivered on his vow to shield an estimated 5 million immigrants living here illegally from deportation — an amnesty that he said was necessary because Congress had failed to send him a comprehensive immigration reform bill.
Labrador said that, in fact, some of the measures the president announced on Thursday came directly from immigration proposals that Congress had already approved — only to be rejected by the president.
In his speech, the president said that "he was going to do high-tech immigration because businesses have been asking for that," said Labrador, citing the plan to expand HB1 visas for skilled and degreed workers in science, technology and medicine.
"We passed a
high-tech immigration bill two years ago out of the House of Representatives," said Labrador. "Well guess who said that he would not accept it? The president of the United States. Guess who decided that he wouldn't hear it in the Senate? [Democrat Majority Leader] Sen. Harry Reid.
"We have been doing immigration reform in the House of Representatives — we just haven't accepted the
Senate bill," he said, referring to the measure that passed the Senate 68-32 in 2013.
Yet Obama, according to Labrador, is insisting that the Senate bill is the House's only option.
"Listen to his words," said the congressman. "He keeps saying that the only way he will back away from the illegal acts that he did last night is if we vote and pass the Senate bill. This is extortion. That's not the way the Constitution works."
The president bypassed Congress despite criticism that he is
exceeding his authority, and asserting powers the Constitution explicitly gives to legislators, not the executive.
Labrador — who has clashed with his caucus' leadership and once ran for House Speaker against Rep. John Boehner — echoed a sentiment among his GOP colleagues that Obama
missed an opportunity on Thursday.
"If his speech last night would have been the beginning of his reform efforts, if he would have gone to the American public with that speech last night and said, 'Please help me get Congress to act,' that would have been a fine speech," said Labrador.
"But that's not the speech you give as an emperor," he said "That's not the speech you give when you're telling the American people, 'I don’t' care what you did in November. I don’t' care that you elected a Republican Congress. I'm going to act on my own.'
"It's shameful," said Labrador, "and we need to respond."
The response has to be substantive, he added.
"That's why we have to walk and chew gum at the same time," said Labrador, explaining, "It would be a mistake for us to call him out on what he's doing, and then to use this as an excuse not to do immigration reform."
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