Cruz Urges Halting All Nominations Over Obama’s Immigration Order

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) laid out how Republicans should respond if President Barack Obama takes executive action on the country’s immigration policy in a new Politico column.

Obama reportedly plans to announce his immigration order on Friday.

In the column (with the click bait headline “Obama is not a monarch”) argues that if the president does take executive action on immigration reform Senate Republicans in the 114th Congress won’t confirm executive or judicial nominee in national security positions. He also argues that Republicans should pass individual appropriations bills, an echo of a strategy floated during the 2013 government shutdown:

If the President announces executive amnesty, the new Senate Majority Leader who takes over in January should announce that the 114th Congress will not confirm a single nominee—executive or judicial—outside of vital national security positions, so long as the illegal amnesty persists.

This is a potent tool given to Congress by the Constitution explicitly to act as a check on executive power. It is a constitutional power of the Majority Leader alone, and it would serve as a significant deterrent to a lawless President.

Additionally, the new Congress should exercise the power of the purse by passing individual appropriations bills authorizing critical functions of government and attaching riders to strip the authority from the president to grant amnesty.

Paradoxically, Cruz then predicted that Obama will “threaten a shutdown — that seems to be the one card he repeatedly plays — but Congress can authorize funding for agencies of government one at a time.”

“If the President is unwilling to accepting [sic] funding for, say, the Department of Homeland Security without his being able to unilaterally defy the law, he alone will be responsible for the consequences.”