Immigration reform was expected to be among the topics of today’s meeting between President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner at the White House. But the Ohio Republican should be wary of Obama’s intentions—and desire to grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants—given his selective enforcement of federal laws, The Heritage Foundation’s Derrick Morgan says in an interview with The Foundry.
“I think they just have very few reasons to trust this President right now,” Morgan, Heritage’s vice president of domestic and economic policy, says when asked his advice for Boehner and House conservatives on tackling immigration reform with Obama. “What Congress ought to be doing is checking the President’s power. People have a severe distrust in Washington right now.”
In Part 3 of the on-camera interview recorded earlier this month, The Foundry’s Genevieve Wood asks Morgan about the President’s ability to use executive orders to overcome congressional resistance to amnesty – and what that would mean for the rule of law. Among her questions: How can conservatives stop Obama if he moves forward without Congress? And what can Obama do to convince House conservatives to take on immigration this year, as he urged in his State of the Union address?
In addition to matters of immigration and border security, Morgan says, Obama “has been changing the law or not enforcing the law at his own whim” in Obamacare, drug prosecutions and the IRS targeting scandal. It’s “just wrong” for Obama to act in this way, he says, and the Constitution provides remedies through both Congress and the courts.
The Foundry’s Steve Weyrich produced this and two previous video reports (February 7 and February 14) on the Morgan interview designed to pose tough questions about Heritage’s immigration and border security plan.
This story was produced by The Foundry’s news team. Nothing here should be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of The Heritage Foundation.