Obama Presidency ‘Increasingly Lawless’: Paul Ryan

Top House Republicans slammed President Obama’s embrace of executive action to move his agenda forward on Sunday, saying the president’s freelancing creates a trust deficit that makes bipartisan legislating more difficult.

“We have an increasingly lawless presidency where he is actually doing the job of Congress, writing new policies and new laws without going through Congress. Presidents don’t write laws, Congress does,” Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., told ABC. “Executive orders are one thing, but executive orders that actually change the statute, that’s totally different.”

In his State of the Union on Tuesday, the president pledged to work with Congress where they could find common ground, but he also said he’d enact his agenda via executive order where possible if lawmakers proved unable to act.

Though he’s said much the same thing before, the president’s continued reliance on his administrative authority has sown fresh outrage among congressional Republicans.

Confronted with statistics showing that Mr. Obama has issued fewer executive orders than his recent predecessors, Ryan said it not the “number” but rather the “scope” of the executive orders that troubled him.

Still, Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee and an influential voice among conservatives in the GOP caucus, shied away from any talk of impeaching the president over his alleged overreach. TRUNews