Republican Congressman Paul Ryan told Sean Hannity on “Hannity” Tuesday that any attempt at amnesty through executive order on President Barack Obama’s part would be “blatantly unconstitutional,” and Republicans would block his efforts if they win the Senate.
HANNITY: If the president follows through on his threat for executive amnesty, what do you have in terms of tools at your disposal to stop him from doing that?
RYAN: Well first of all, it’s unconstitutional. We’re already going through the court system on other unconstitutional executive orders that he’s worked on and we would add this to the pile. Second of all, if we can get the power of the purse, we will explore every option that we can to exercise that power of the purse to get this executive to honor the Constitution. If he were to do something like that, by the way, he’d put million of people in legal limbo, poison the well for Congress, and do something that’s so blatantly unconstitutional. And so we’re telling the administration, ‘Don’t even think about doing this.’
HANNITY: I have little doubt that he’ll do it.
RYAN: Well, I don’t know the answer to that question. We’ll find out. But if he does do that, it’s not constitutional, it’s going around Congress. If you want to change a law, then go to Congress and work with Congress to change the law. You can’t unilaterally write a law as the executive, that’s not how the Constitution works.
HANNITY: He’s done it on health care, he’s done it on immigration, he’s done it with welfare, he did it with the National Labor Relations Board appointments. He’s done it more than a few times.
RYAN: It’s one of the reasons we’re taking him to court as well. This is why the House of Representatives had voted to take him to court, to litigate that. But more importantly, because we don’t have the Senate, we don’t have the power of the purse. We’d like to be exercise that more effectively, and if we can get the Senate we can do that.