‘When, President Obama, do you mean to cease abusing our patience?’ Republican asks in Senate floor speech appearing to mimic Roman philosopher

Senator Ted Cruz led the conservative charge against Barack Obama’s decision to use executive action to reform the immigration system on Thursday, adapting remarks by the Roman philosopher Cicero to accuse the president of wanting to “destroy the constitution”.

In speech on the Senate floor, Cruz, a Texas Republican, appeared to mimic the Roman politician, whose defence of democracy he described as “powerfully relevant 2,077 years later”.

Obama is scheduled to unveil his plans to shield up to five million undocumented migrants from deportation in a move that has infuriated Republican opponents who argue he is overreaching his own powers to grant an effective “amnesty”.

“When, President Obama, do you mean to cease abusing our patience?” Cruz declared in a speech modelled on Cicero’s First Oration Against Catiline to the Roman Senate. “How long is that madness of yours still to mock us? When is there to be an end to that unbridled audacity of yours swaggering about as it does now?”

While Cruz was making the theatrical remarks, Republican leaders were struggling to establish precisely how they can use their control of Congress to undermine the president’s plans.

In a blow to Obama’s conservative critics, the Republican chairman of the House appropriations committee, which Republicans had hoped could be used to defund any presidential action over immigration, said it was not technically possible.

Hal Rogers, from Kentucky, said the primary agency for implementing Obama’s imminent executive order is “entirely self-funded through the fees it collects for any of its operations” and is therefore not operationally funded by Congress. “Therefore, the appropriations process cannot be used to ‘de-fund’ the agency,” he said, adding that the US citizenship and immigration services would continue to operate in the event of a government shutdown.

His statement neutered one of the instruments Republicans were most hopeful of using to combat Obama’s executive action, through which he is widely expected to grant work permits – and de facto permission to stay in the US – to millions of people who are in the country illegally.

Republican congressional sources said there was pressure from the top ranks of the party to delay any reaction to Obama’s announcement until January, when the party retakes control of the Senate.

Cruz, who orchestrated the 2013 government shutdown in protest over Obama’s healthcare law, has proposed another course of action, suggesting that incoming Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell should block every Obama administration nomination sent to the Senate, except for those that relate to vital national security positions.

That too would rely on waiting until the next Congress. McConnell also predicted a confrontation between the White House and Congress that will take place in January, when Republicans reap the benefits of their midterm election victories.

“If President Obama acts in defiance of the people and imposes his will on the country, Congress will act,” said McConnell. “We’re considering a variety of actions. But make no mistake, when the newly elected representatives of the people take their seats, they will act.”

Yet any such delay is unlikely to satisfy the party’s right wing, particularly in the more conservative House, where Cruz has become a standard-bearer for Tea Party-aligned members.

Cruz delighted supporters at the height of the confrontation over Obamacare last year with a marathon Senate speech lasting 21 hours and 19 minutes, in which he quoted actor Ashton Kutcher and Dr Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham.

Thursday’s speech, in which Cruz effectively twisted Cicero’s remarks to turn it into a critique of presidential power, was far shorter – lasting just four minutes – but no less bizarre.

He said the president was “openly desirous to destroy the constitution in this Republic” and added: “We alone, and I say it openly, are waiting in our duty to stop this lawless administration and its unconstitutional amnesty.”

Rather than any complaint about executive power, Cicero’s speech in 63 BC was actually a denunciation of a Catiline, a fellow Roman senator who had secretly plotted to violently overthrow the Republic.

Cambridge University professor Malcolm Schofield, one of the world’s foremost experts on Cicero, said the Roman orator was, himself, accused of overreach.

“Quite a lot of people did think that in dealing with Catiline, Cicero overreached his powers,” he said. “He had some of [Catiline’s] associates, who were Roman citizens, summarily executed without trial. It is a question whether he had the powers to do that.”

That detail does not appear to have dissuaded Cruz.

Cruz’s remarks were the most high-profile among a cascade of complaints from Republicans, on the Senate floor and along the corridors of the Capitol, over a president they accused of forcing through an undemocratic policy that would deprive US citizens of jobs and act as a magnet for thousands of illegal migrants.

“Shame on the age and its lost principles,” Cruz thundered.

“This man dictates by his pen and his phone. Dictates! Ah, he won’t even come into the Senate. He will not take part in the public deliberations. He ignores every individual among us. And we gallant men and women think that we are doing our duty to the Republic if we keep out of the way of his frenzied attacks.”

Cruz added: “You ought, President Obama, long ago have been led to defeat by your own disdain for the people.”