HR 418 -- A National ID Bill Masquerading As Immigration Reform by Rep. Ron Paul
Maybe this is why he wants the line item veto?
And it looks like the Senate was waffling as well:
July 15, 2005 - The Senate backed away from its 2004 pledge to hire 2,000 more Border Patrol agents and fund 8,000 new detention beds for illegal aliens in fiscal 2006. The intelligence overhaul bill passed by Congress and signed into law in last December called for 2,000 new agents and 8,000 new detention beds each year for the next five years in order to meet the threat posed by illegal aliens. But in mid-July, the Senate voted on amendments to the Department of Homeland Security spending bill, providing funds for only 1,000 more agents and 2,240 more detention beds in fiscal 2006.
And you must also remember that the President's budget is a proposal, not a mandate, and Congress has the ultimate authority for funding. IOW, you may not have liked what he proposed to fund or not fund, but that does not absolve Congress of their ultimate responsibility on the issue of funding new border agents.
Very true. And Congress has done their job over the President's objections.
But your Post 42 was in response to my Post 16 to your Post 11 and if you trace this conversation backwards you will see that we have now come full circle and you are now making my original point for me.
It is not the President's job to propose legislation to fix the immigration problem. The only role in the legislative process that the Constitution gives the President is either signing it or vetoing it. There is nothing in the Constitution that prohibits the President from making legislative proposals but it is not one of his primary or even defined Constitutional duties.
But the Constitution does give the President a mandated duty to secure the borders and to enforce laws enacted by Congress. And to paraphrase (and twist) your words above: the President may not have liked the laws passed by Congress, but that does not absolve him of the ultimate responsibility to enforce them.
The President has recently argued that the Constitution gives him the inherent authority to do the NSA wiretaps and that he did not need legislative authorization from Congress to take those steps to protect the American people. I agree with him on that point. The Constitution also gives the President responsibility for securing the borders and he has the inherent authority (and indeed a duty) under the Constitution to accomplish that task with or without authorizations from Congress. He could deploy the National Guard to the Border for that purpose tomorrow on his own Constitutional authority.
Actually, as can be seen here (PDF file), he did very much support the REAL ID Act.
This incidentally blows out of the water the whole theory that Bush is soft on illegal entry because he wants to attract Hispanic votes. He's soft on illegal entry because he's committed to turning the Americas into an EU-style superstate. And as that Ron Paul column you linked to indicates, the REAL ID Act is a step in that direction because it provides for, among other things, the sharing of U.S. driver's license data with Canada and Mexico.