Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley says he’s “very concerned” President Obama may take action on his own during the August Congressional recess to fix the border problem, as thousands of Central American children have entered the U.S. illegally in the past several months.
Senator Grassley, a Republican, fears the president will issue an executive order that takes drastic measures. “This president is willing to take a chance on anything,” Grassley says. “He probably will do it and someday, the courts will say that he acted in an unconstitutional way. They’ve already done that a dozen times or so.” As many as 60-thousand children from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala have come into the U.S. illegally since October. About 140 of the children have already reached Iowa. While the U.S. government’s system of checks and balances stipulates Congress makes the laws while the president heads the executive branch, Grassley says Obama thinks he’s a lawmaker, too.
Grassley says, “He’s already announced at two different times that he didn’t have legislative authority to do things that he went ahead and did anyway.” He predicts any action the president takes on the border issue will eventually end up before the U.S. Supreme Court and be overturned, but by then, Grassley says, Obama will be out of office. It’s a pattern with the president, the senator says.
“A year before he passed the legalization of people that we call Dreamers, he said he didn’t have the authority to do it and one year later, he did it,” according to Grassley. Republicans in the U.S. House pushed through a near-$700 million package to solve the border issue. The Democrat-controlled Senate won’t take up the House measure and it falls far short of the money requested by the president.