Speaking at an anti-illegal immigration rally Tuesday along with Reps. Steve King (R-Iowa) and Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) called on Congress to finally “rein in a lawless president” by voting to defund Obama’s historic overreach of authority on immigration.

Cruz said after the president's unilaterally granted deportation reprieve for about 5 million illegal immigrants, Congress was now responsible to “rein in a lawless president.”

Cruz focused some of his remarks on those Democratic senators who have recently pushed back against Obama’s immigration order. “[N]early a dozen Senate Democrats” have opposed Obama’s action, said Cruz—what King described as evidence that the Democratic Party had begun to “fracture” over the issue.

“If they’re going to stand up and criticize the president,” said Cruz, “they should vote” to defund the executive order. “This is not a fight between President Obama and Republicans. This is a fight between President Obama and a Congress elected by the American people.”

Obama's immigration order was a deliberate attempt to undermine the compromise principal at work in the separation of powers, argued Cruz. “Working with Congress requires compromise and this is a president that never ever compromises,” he said.

With no federal budget in place, government funding must once again be maintained by the passage of a continuing resolution. Cruz and his fellow Republicans presented this as a crucial opportunity for Congress to check the president’s power by passing a “short term resolution that explicitly defunds” the president’s order until Republicans are fully in power in January, at which point they can use the power of the purse to further stymie Obama’s executive overreach.

Until January, King argued, the GOP must stand united against the president’s lawlessness:

“How can you say you have the will to defend the Constitution in January, February, or March if you are not willing to defend the Constitution in December?” King said. “It takes the constitutional argument away if we fund it.”

“When the president violates his oath … we’re ever more required to uphold ours,” added King.

Bachmann underscored the difference between the current Republican position and their stance leading to the two-week partial government shutdown in 2013, saying, “We are not here to shutdown the American government … we’re here to uphold the Constitution.”

H/T WFB.