Rep. Raul Labrador says that President Obama is increasingly making Congress irrelevant as he seeks to implement his progressive vision for America using the executive branch and the courts.
In an interview, the first Hispanic Republican from Idaho, who rode into Congress three years ago on the 2010 tea party wave, said that the legislative branch must do more to fight the loss of its power.
“I think President Obama is learning more and more that the Congress is irrelevant, and I think that’s our own fault,” Labrador said.
“Every time there’s a difference with the president, he says, ‘I don’t need the Congress anymore. I can actually pass it through regulations or through executive orders,’ he said. “The biggest fear that I have is that we will go to a system of government that was actually repudiated by our Founding Fathers. Our Founding Fathers did not want a strong executive. They did not want a monarch. And the reason was because you had one person making the decisions for all the American people, or all the people of the nation. That’s why they escaped England.”
Labrador, an unapologetic conservative, discussed compassion, immigration, the next big budget fight and House Speaker John Boehner’s prospects of being re-elected speaker.
The two parties show compassion for the poor in very different ways, he said.
“Democrats think that the only way you can care about somebody is by making them dependent on the government,” he said.
He went on to explain why his single-parent mother who worked “two to three to four jobs,” refusing assistance, because she thought “it would take something away from us, it would take the dignity away.”
Labrador also dished advice to his fellow Republicans: “I think Republicans are too afraid, sometimes, of their own shadows. They are so worried of being liked, that they are unwilling to defend themselves on principle.”
He says his colleagues “need to stop worrying about what the Washington media says about us.”
Watch Part 2:
The most conservative member in the bipartisan group of representatives asked to broker an immigration reform bill, Labrador pulled out in June when he realized the Democrats seemed more focused on dividing the Republicans than solving the problem.
In this video interview, Labrador said the White House and Democrat Leadership backed away when House negotiators demanded “hard triggers” in the bill to do verifiable enforcement first before amnesty was granted. Labrador also warned Republicans not to pander to Hispanics.
“Hispanics are not going to vote for Republicans just because we voted for an immigration bill.” He says, we have to show them “our ideas are better” and how “they can achieve success better under a Republican plan.”
In a previous segment of the interview, Labrador discussed the implications of Obamacare’s rollout, and how the government shutdown has become easier to explain now that the pain of Obamacare is widespread.
