Should President-elect Trump, once he's inaugurated,
use his executive powers
in the same way that you have?
I think that he is entirely within his lawful
power to do so.
Keep in mind though that my strong preference
has always been to legislate
when I can get legislation done.
In my first two years, I wasn't relying on
executive powers, because I had big majorities
in the Congress and we were able to get bills
done, get bills passed.
And even after we lost the majorities in Congress
I bent over backwards consistently to try
to find compromise and a legislative solution
to some of the big problems that we've got
a classic example being immigration reform,
where I held off for years in taking some
of the executive actions that I ultimately
took in pursuit of a bipartisan solution
one that, by the way, did pass through the Senate
on a bipartisan basis with our help.
I was very proud of that.
I went out of my way to make sure our help
was behind the scenes so that Republicans
didn't feel as if it was going to hurt them
politically.
At the end of the day, John Boehner and the
House Republicans couldn't pull the trigger
on getting it done.
And it was only then after we had exhausted
efforts for bipartisan reform that we took
some additional steps on immigration executive
actions.
So my suggestion to the president-elect is,
you know, going through the legislative process
is always better, in part because it's harder
to undo.
And that doesn't mean, though, that he is
not going to come in and look at the various
agencies and see the rules we've passed and
if he wants to reverse some of those rules,
that's part of the democratic process.
That's why I tell people to vote
because it turns out elections mean something.
