President Barack Obama on Monday cautioned guests at a San Francisco fundraiser against pushing him to sign executive orders addressing issues on which Congress does not act, like immigration, according to a White House pool report.
At a Democratic National Committee event at SFJazz, a guest continuously yelled “executive order” during the President’s speech, and Obama took the time to respond.
“I’m going to actually pause on this issue because a lot of people have been saying this lately on every problem, which is just, ‘Sign an executive order and we can pretty much do anything and basically nullify Congress.'”
Some guests began to applaud Obama but he stopped them, explaining that relying only on executive orders is not a good approach.
“Before everybody starts clapping, that’s not how it works. We’ve got this Constitution, we’ve got this whole thing about separation of powers. So there is no short-cut to politics, and there’s no short-cut to democracy,” he said. “We have to win on the merits of the argument with the American people, as laborious as it seems sometimes…What we have to do is keep on going, keep on pushing, and eventually we move in a better direction.”
Obama reiterated later in his speech that executive orders are not the best course of action.
“It’s not easy,” he said. “I can’t just sign an executive order.”
