Good morning. The Judiciary Committee will come to order, and without objection the chair is authorized to declare recesses of the committee at any time. We welcome everyone to this mornings hearing on the unconstitutionality of president obamas executive actions on immigration, and ill begin by recognizing myself for an opening statement. Last november president obama announced one of the biggest constitutional power grabs ever by a president. He declared unilaterally that by his own estimation almost 5 million unlawful aliens would be free from the legal consequences of their lawless actions. Not only that, by granting them deferred action, he would bestow upon them benefits such as legal presence, Work Authorization, and access to the Social Security trust fund and the earned income tax credit. President obama took these actions despite having stated over 20 times in the past that he didnt have the constitutional power to take such steps on his own. As the washington posts own fact
The definition gets cloudier not more specific in my view. And in fact, you know, if we end somewhere like three out of the seven, that would be clear too, wouldnt it . Wouldnt it be just as clear to say navigable waters are waters that are navigable for interstate commerce and why wouldnt that be we have been the area that lacks clarity right now is not the issue of navigable waters. The Supreme Court actually spoke very definitively that navigable waters need to be looked at in a way that isnt the traditional definition. We havent been looking at navigable waters the same way. It is a recognition that navigable waters in their ability to provide the functions that we look for, are really severely impacted by the waters that flow into them. So the challenge we tried to face in the clean water rule was to take a look at how do we identify those rivers streams tributaries, wetlands that feed into those navigable waters that we need to understand and protect so that they wont degrade tho
These regulations, by the way were adopted through notice and comment procedures and they do have the force of law. None of these laws not one of them, says or even remotely implies that deferred action is per se illegal. The most vocal critics have misunderstood what deferred action is. Theyve confused deferred action itself with certain things that you can apply for if you get deferred action. But deferred action itself is just one form of prosecutorial discretion. Its a decision not to prioritize a persons removal, at least for the moment and the only thing affirmative about it is that the agency is giving the person a piece of paper letting them know that that is the case. Every immigration scholar and practitioner knows that deferred action can be revoked at any time for any reason and the government can bring removal proceedings at any time contrary to what my new friend professor foley has said. Theres nothing in any law that says this makes a person who is deportable not deport
Morning at 7 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan. You can join the conversation with your calls and comments on facebook. Here are some of the our featured programs for this week on the cspan networks. On book tv, saturday at 10 00 p. M. Eastern author peter wall wallison says the housing crisis could happen again opinion direct toror of the Earth Institute. Saturday morning at 10 30 eastern a discussion on the last major speeches of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther king jr. Sunday afternoon at 4 00, the 1965 meet the press interview with Martin Luther king jr. Find our complete Television Schedule and let us know what you think about the programs youre watching. Send us a tweet at cspan hashtag comments. Join the cspan conversation like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. Tom cotton talks about National Security priorities including violent extremism and Nuclear Weapons in iran. He recently authored a letter to iran signed by 47 republican senators suggesting that any deal would be overturne
Clancys the right person to get us there. Well he didnt know about this for five days. Thats true. It happened on wednesday which meant i didnt know about it for five days plus. And found out he said through an email. Instead of up the chain of command. That concerns me a lot that the agency needs discipline, and it needs an outsider in some position there to be sure that were not jeopardizing the president s life, by taking care of people who have been our friends for years within the service. And that smacks to me that that may have happened on the latest incident. So mr. Secretary were looking to you to bring that agency in to conformity with the high standards with which its been associated with all these years. We must discipline that agency and make it work like its supposed to. The importance of the job they have, to protect the life of the president of the United States among other things demands remedy. Thank you. I couldnt agree more, sir. Thank you, mr. Chairman. We have six