so committee hearing from the justice department or for the justice department and eric holder is on the hot seat right now. we have been watching everybody file into the room. so talked to the chair of the committee and they have a lot of heated questions they are ready to file at the attorney general from lois lerner to overreaches. i am martha maccallum. and i will bill hemmer. they can expect a drilling on the enforcement of the law. the chairmen telling us the administration likes to cherry pick laws and ignore others. the congress writes the law and the president has the duty of carrying it out. if he doesn t like it, he needs
president has the duty to do under article 2 of the constitution. many of those are routine matters that are perfectly appropriate with including some issue offed by president obama. the issue isn t in numbers, it s the reach the president has taken in a whole host of areas from education to welfare reform. simply waving statutory requirements in our welfare laws so benefits can be extended to people who don t qualify under the law for them. waving requirements of the no child left behind act. many much these things need to be addressed in the congress. not in the white house. the president says i have a pen and a cell phone. if you don t do it i ll do it myself. that doesn t build confidence in the congress that if we pass new laws he will enforce them. if you are not going to carry
to carry it out and if it is unpopular, they will put pressure on the law to change it but the congress needs to change it not the president. mike emanual is watching from the hill. what are the certaoncerns about executive overreach? they are concerned about the way he has changed the health care law three dozen time and they think he should come back to congress to change it. here you have the chief law enforcement officer of the united states, the attorney general before congress, jow better believe he is going to get tough questions about selective enforcement and how the adjustments to the health care law and selectively enforcing others law and how it is legal. there is going to be fired up
out the laws why should the congress trust you with new laws to try to solve some of the problems that do exist in our society that need to be addressed. but this president has his own mind, his own way of doing it and his attorney general has simply carried his water on these issues rather than being the chief law enforcement officer of the united states. martha: no doubt the attorney general has his own reasons and his own substantiation for making the decisions. of time the president does one of these executive orders. every one of the 28 sometimes the healthcare law has been changed or amended by these kind of executive orders also for drug issues as you pointed out. he has had to go before the attorney general and say are we okay on this and the attorney general has said absolutely, mr. president. it s an unbelievable stretch on things such as prosecutorial discretion which is good to have in the law.
joins us here this morning. what is top of mind? what are you going to ask eric holder this morning? as you noted and as your viewers know, there are many issues. one is executive overreach as it pertains to the actions of the attorney general, not enforcing drug laws, for example. this issue of the president of the united states rewriting laws or refusing to enforce existing laws is a serious threat to the article one powers of the congress. also we are interested in hearing the attorney general s take on the administration s proposals with regard to the foreign intelligence