Sen. Mike Lee (R- Utah) doesn’t think the President should have the power to unilaterally rewrite laws, condemning Obama’s recent decision to delay the Obamacare employer mandate is a “shameless power grab.”
Lee talked with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday this week, along with Rep. Xavier Basara (D-Calif.). The topic of discussion revolved around the Affordable Care Act and the ways in which President Barack Obama has continued to adjust and alter the law whenever it suits him.
“This is a shameless act, a shameless power grab that is designed to help the President and his political party achieve a particular outcome in a partisan election,” Lee said. “And that’s wrong.”
He described Obama’s tactic as a way to essentially circumvent the law and the Constitution, which Lee said doesn’t grant the President the right to use his power in this way.
“People delegate that power to their Senators and to their Congressmen,” he said. “They don’t give it to the president to act unilaterally, and there’s good reason for that.”
Basara, on the other hand, defended the use of executive orders as the President’s prerogative, pointing out that Obama has actually used the power less than his predecessors. He argued that the President has the right to ensure that laws are administered in a way that helps Americans.
“If this were against the Constitution, someone would have sued by now and the President would have had to stop,” Basara told Wallace.
Lee disagreed with this logic and insisted that misuse of power is the reason why a constitution even exists — “to help prevent — to protect us against the excessive concentration of power in the hands of the few, or here in the case of the hands of one person.”
Countering Basara’s argument that Obama is merely granting businesses the flexibility they need, Lee said that the President should then come make the case to Congress that changes are needed.
“It is not the President prerogative to simply make this the law by the stroke of the executive pen,” the Utah Senator closed.
