Amnesty: Pundits warn that a funding fight over the president's move to grant de facto amnesty to illegal aliens threatens a politically risky government shutdown. But there's something much more important at stake here.

 The Founders had good reason to give Congress the power of the purse: Short of impeachment, it's the most effective way to stop a lawless president from disobeying the will of Congress and usurping powers not granted by the Constitution.

 The question is: Will Congress use this power to thwart President Obama's shredding of the Constitution with his executive amnesty plan?

 Incoming Senate Budget Committee Chairman Jeff Sessions is on record as opposing any long-term budget resolution that would include funding for this executive travesty. He wants a short-term bill to get us to the point where the new Congress can fund everything except the Homeland Security Office responsible for carrying out the president's amnesty plan.

 "This executive amnesty scheme will give work permits, photo IDs and Social Security numbers to millions of illegal immigrants, taking jobs directly from unemployed Americans. Congress must not fund this effort," Sessions said a week ago.

 Liberal talking heads and administration spokespersons are again warning of a government shutdown and its political peril for the GOP. After the 2013 shutdown, when the GOP controlled only the House, they also went ballistic, blaming Republicans for putting barricades in front of veterans in wheelchairs who were trying to visit the World War II Memorial.
Yet somehow the GOP recovered in an election in which voters were not too stupid to realize that they could no longer trust Democrats with purse strings or power. Go ahead, Mr. President, make our day.
Even if a shutdown were to happen, and Sessions' piecemeal approach seems designed to prevent it, the media and the White House could not blame it on an intransigent GOP House of Representatives with the president an above-the-battle bystander. This time, the bills would be on his desk, and it would be his choice.
There's more at stake here than mere political fortunes. We are at the constitutional tipping point that Georgetown University law professor Jonathan Turley warned us about as Obama continues to wield executive authority that he himself once said he did not have.
We live in a constitutional republic, and the president who says he cannot wait for the Congress to act ignores a Constitution that says he has to. Article I, Section 8 gives Congress exclusive authority to "establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization" and Article II, Section 3 says that it's the president's duty "to take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed."
Professor Turley told the House Judiciary Committee at a Dec. 3 hearing that Obama's abuse of executive power has grown to the point that "he's becoming the very danger the Constitution was designed to avoid."
It's time to protect the Constitution. Don't show him the money, Congress.