The president has the legal authority to use executive power for many things, but granting amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants is not one of them, former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy says.
"He's totally exceeding his authority," McCarthy, a senior fellow at National Review, said Wednesday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
Newsmax TV.
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"There's stuff he has authority to do but shouldn't do, and then there's other stuff that's utterly lawless.
"Things like legal status, relief from deportation and work permits. Those he has absolutely no power to confer, and he can only do them with the cooperation of Congress. That's the way I look at it."
McCarthy — author of
"Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama's Impeachment," published by Encounter Books — said Republicans can work to stop the abuse of power by refusing to fund any immigration initiative.
"They should make clear in the budget resolution, this continuing resolution that they're going to fund the government with, they should absolutely not give him a year of authority because that takes their power of the purse off the table for all purposes.
"But in the short term, they should refuse to give any funding for Obama's amnesty initiative and dare him to veto that under circumstances where this is intensely unpopular with the public."
McCarthy was the assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and prosecuted the terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993.
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