Great breakdown by Newt of how Obama said one thing in the speech, but actually intends to do so much more unconstitutional action.
(CNN) — President Barack Obama’s speech Thursday night was technically a fine speech. It sounded good. It was rhetorically impressive. Its problem — or perhaps to the President its virtue — is that very little of it was true.
President Obama described what sounded like a reasonable plan to prioritize the deportation of felons, criminals and gang members over the deportation of other people in the United States illegally. “We’ll prioritize,” he said, “just like law enforcement does every day.” The whole proposal was entirely within his authority, he argued, because it amounted to a kind of prosecutorial discretion: “All we’re saying is we’re not going to deport you.”
But the policy the White House actually announced, as opposed to the policy the President described in his speech, was not merely a directive to emphasize enforcement against those who have committed crimes, or even a simple pause on deportations for millions of Americans here illegally. The policy the White House actually announced, in a memo from its Office of Legislative Affairs hours before the President’s speech, was a 17-point plan including several new programs without congressional approval, budget appropriation or spending authorization, and many of which the President either didn’t mention or which bore only a faint resemblance to what he described in his speech.