GOP senator: SCOTUS nominee should reject ‘pen and phone’ approach

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) on Thursday called on President Obama to nominate a Supreme Court justice who will reject the president’s extensive use of executive actions.

“Mr. President, I’m here to provide you some advice on how you would get my consent” for a potential nominee, Sasse says in a video released by his office.

{mosads}”I recommend that you take your potential nominee and go and stand in the Rose Garden, and have that nominee explicitly repudiate your ‘I have a pen and I have a phone’ theories of executive unilateralism.”

The president has infuriated conservatives with executive actions addressing issues like gun control, climate change and illegal immigration.

“You have said in the past that it doesn’t matter to you if the Congress passes the laws you want them to pass, because you can just make up law by executive fiat,” Sasse says.

“Sir, that is not the American system,” the freshman senator adds, before launching into an explanation of the system of checks and balances laid out in the Constitution.