WH Political Director: Obama Can’t Ignore Congressional Mandates

White House Political Director David Simas argued that President Barack Obama was right in 2011 when he said that he could not suspend deportations through an executive order, but is also within his power to implement immigration reform via an executive order on CNN’s “New Day” on Thursday.

After viewing a clip of the president saying “there are enough laws on the books by Congress that are very clear in terms of how we have to enforce our immigration system that for me to simply through executive order ignore those congressional mandates would not conform with my appropriate role as President,” Simas argued “he was right then and he’s right now. It is not appropriate for the president to ignore congressional mandates. It’s not appropriate for the president by fiat to say that he can do every single thing that was in the comprehensive immigration reform bill that was passed by a bipartisan majority in the Senate 512 days ago. What you’re going to hear tonight are very limited actions, fully within his existing authority, similar to those types of actions that have been taken by every single president, Democrat and Republican, since Dwight Eisenhower.”

He added, “Let’s be precise about what the president said in 2011 about ignoring congressional mandates, that’s not what this is about. this is about a president saying that there are certain things that he can do, under his authority, to take a first step to make things better, to bring some accountability to the system.”

(h/t Hot Air)

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