After President Obama's State of the Union Address, in which he once again threatened to ignore the constitutional separation of powers and act unilaterally, Congressman Paul A. Gosar, D.D.S. (AZ-04), along with Reps. Matt Salmon (AZ-05) and Trent Franks (AZ-08), sent a letter to the President reminding him of his constitutional duties.
Arizona Representatives Admonish President Obama 'We want the President to know we are watching him'
After President Obama's State of the Union Address, in which he once again threatened to ignore the constitutional separation of powers and act unilaterally, Congressman Paul A. Gosar, D.D.S. (AZ-04), along with Reps. Matt Salmon (AZ-05) and Trent Franks (AZ-08), sent a letter to the President reminding him of his constitutional duties. In the letter, they told the President that "you are not free to enact your own legislative agenda and policy goals by executive fiat."
After the letter was sent, Rep. Gosar said, "President Obama's disregard for our constitutional structure undermines our nation. The President doesn't have the authority to unilaterally choose which laws to enforce and not enforce. Nor does he have the authority to supersede the Legislative Branch - a co-equal branch of government - by enacting policy through executive orders. Additionally, he has used the IRS to attack his perceived enemies and uses the NSA to spy on honest, hardworking Americans. We want President Obama to know we are watching him. As a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, I will do everything I can to hold the President accountable for these transgressions against the Constitution."
Rep. Salmon said, "According to the President, he has a pen and a phone and intends to use it to pass his priorities. Americans don’t care about pens and phones; they care about jobs and paychecks. This requires a President who will work with Congress to pass bills that grow the economy, not go around Congress to grow the size of government."
BACKGROUND
President Obama has publicly threatened, on multiple occasions, to evade and violate the Constitution by implementing legislative policies "by pen" through executive order. He repeated his reckless threat during the State of the Union speech and claimed he can legislate and ignore laws on a whim.
In a December 3, 2013 Judiciary Committee Hearing, Georgetown University Law Professor Nicholas Rosenkranz concluded that the President’s executive actions crossed the lines of constitutionality: “The President has a personal obligation to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed’...The President cannot suspend laws altogether. He cannot favor unenacted bills over duly enacted laws. And he cannot discriminate on the basis of politics in his execution of the laws. The President has crossed all three of these lines."
George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley agreed, and addressed the harm inflicted by Obama: “The danger is quite severe. The problem with what the President is doing is that he’s not simply posing a danger to the constitutional system. He’s becoming the very danger the Constitution was designed to avoid. That is the concentration of power in a single branch.”
