Speaker of the House John Boehner lambasted President Obama for his failure to respect the constitutional limits of his authority, striking a defiant tone as the GOP-controlled House voted to block the White House’s push for executive amnesty.
The Republican majority leader took the House floor moments before the successful 236-191 vote, which funded the Department of Homeland Security past February while simultaneously moving to block unilateral executive initiatives granting legal status to millions of illegal immigrants.
“Today I rise, and the House rises, to support and defend our Constitution,” Boehner began, saying there is “no alternative . . . This executive overreach is an affront to the rule of law, and to the Constitution itself.”
“What we’re dealing with is a president who has ignored the people, who has ignored the Constitution, and even his own past statements,” the Speaker said – proceeding to list 22 occasions where President Obama explained his own constitutional limitations on immigration reform.
“To think that the President of the United States actually studied constitutional law is one thing,” Boehner said, referring to the president’s time as a constitutional law scholar at Harvard. “He didn’t just learn constitutional law, he taught it as well. But now his actions suggest that he’s forgotten what these words even mean. Enough is enough!”
The vote comes after intense conservative criticism of Boehner’s leadership earlier this month, with many accusing the Speaker of failing to confront President Obama’s overreach by funding the government through last December’s “cromnibus” spending bill.
The bill now moves to the GOP-controlled Senate, where it must pass the 60-vote threshold to avoid a filibuster. The White House is threatening to veto the bill, betting that blame for an unfunded Department of Homeland Security will fall squarely on Republican shoulders.