Chris Matthews: Obama Can’t ‘Set Policy Without the Congress’

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews said President Obama was “in effect” creating immigration law and declared the president can’t “set policy without the Congress participating” on Tuesday’s “Hardball.”

After panelist Jonathan Capehart argued “we wouldn’t be in this position if Congress had moved on that comprehensive immigration bill that passed the Senate in June 2013,” in a discussion on the president’s executive action  Matthews posed the question, “do you think the president can act just because the Congress screws up? He can’t replace the Congress, you know, you fight the–as somebody said, you fight the battle with the army you have, all he’s got is this Congress, so he says ‘well, if they can’t do the job, I’ll do it,’ but that’s not so easy under our Constitution. You can do certain things along the margins, but can you create immigration law? Which is, in effect, what he’ll be doing if Congress doesn’t act.”

Matthews did express his displeasure with GOP attempts to refuse to fund the President’s executive action, he added “he [Obama] still can’t get away with what he wants to do, which is set policy without the Congress participating. It is a system of three branches of government, and it’s very tricky.”

(h/t The Right Scoop)

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