WASHINGTON — Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz warned of creeping executive power and eroding national sovereignty in a Heritage Foundation talk Wednesday, telling the audience he found President Barack Obama’s willingness to abuse power “disturbing.”
In the upcoming Supreme Court case Bond v. U.S., Cruz explained, a Pennsylvania woman was charged by federal authorities with violating the Chemical Weapons Convention Treaty, which is normally used to take down the likes of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is accused of using sarin gas against his own people.
In a case Cruz argued in front of the Supreme Court himself, President George W. Bush tried to force Texas state courts to recognize a ruling by the World Court.
But President Obama “has consistently flouted the constitutional limits on the authority of the president,” according to the freshman senator.
“The pattern of Obamacare has been really stunning,” Cruz said, picking out the employer mandate delayas an especially egregious example of the Obama administration’s tendency to usurp authority it doesn’t truly have.
“Now, for a couple hundred years, when a statute says there’s a legal obligation that applies on January 1, it meant on January 1,” Cruz said. “This administration simply said, ‘No, we’re not enforcing it.’”
“In fact,” Cruz continued, “they did so through a blog post, from a mid-level Treasury staffer that was posted on Friday afternoon.”
This “disturbing pattern” applied to drugs and immigration too, a problem even if you agree with the underlying policies that administration embraced on those issues.
“Now, as a policy matter, it may be that some people in this room agree with those policy decisions, particularly on the drug side,” Cruz continued, “but prior to this presidency the way you had reasonable modification to federal law was you went to Congress…and you passed a change in the law.”
Cruz chided Democrats for marching in lockstep behind the president.
“One of the things that has disturbed me is the almost total absence of Democrats speaking out at the abuse of the executive power by the Obama administration. I thought it was striking when Rand Paul did his filibuster on drone policy that only one Democrat showed up on the floor to support us,” Cruz said, commending Oregon’s Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden for participating. “The other 53 Democrats apparently had no concerns that the administration used drones to target U.S. citizens.”
Cruz noted that he beat the Bush administration when he argued Medellin v. Texas in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. A 6-3 majority rule in Texas’ favor.
“I’m very proud that the state of Texas went before the U.S. Supreme Court and said, ‘No president — even if he is the former governor of Texas, and a Republican — no president has the authority to give away U.S. sovereignty.’”
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