This week on “Fox News Sunday,” host Chris Wallace asked White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough why President Barack Obama keeps bypassing congress with executive orders against Article 1 of the Constitution.
Wallace asked, “One of the ways he’s been moving the country forward is through executive action, not working through congress … Mr. McDonough , whatever happened to Article 1 of the Constitution which says all the legislative powers herein granted should be vested in a congress of the United States?”
McDonough said, “I was actually happy to see that list. When I was on your show a year ago, you asked if the president was done, that he basically had lost the election, and there was nothing left for him to do, Everything you just laid out were things he got done in the last year, which of course we’re very proud of. Most particularly this climate deal which will protect the country and people for years to country and the Iran nuclear deal.”
Wallace interjected, “But you’re avoiding my point. He did it on his own. He didn’t do what the Constitution says, which is to observe Article 1 that all those legislative powers reside in the congress.”
McDonough rebuffed, “Let me come back to Article 1 in a second and particularly the war power…We just completed a deal which I talked about a second ago, a budget deal allowing us to invest $50 billion dollars above what congress wanted to do in things like middle-class prosperity, middle-class economics. We got a tax extenders deal with congress, because we wanted to make sure that’s invested in middle class families.”
A frustrated Wallace said, “You’re ducking my question.”
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