WASHINGTON — Sen. Mike Lee warned about the dangers of executive overreach Tuesday morning, addressing an audience of young conservatives on topics ranging from the implementation of Obamacare to the American Revolution.



Photo: The Daily Caller / Paxton Delany

“The fact is that we have a government that has sort of run away with its own power,” the Utah Republican said at the Young America’s Foundation’s annual student conference. “We have to remember that the reason we have a revolution, the reason why we became our own country, the reason why we don’t hail the queen today … was about the fact that we were tired of living subject to our London-based government that … was so far from its people it was slow to respond to our needs. It was a government that was encroaching on our liberty.”

Photo: The Daily Caller / Grae Stafford

Lee’s speech comes in the context of his fight to defund the Obamacare legislation. “We’ve seen a significant erosion of that separation of power in recent years. We now have an awful condition where a lot of our law is being made by the executive branch, not the legislative branch.”



Photo: The Daily Caller / Paxton Delany

“What we have is an elected president who thinks he’s a king,” Lee said. The senator proposed giving power to state governments to handle health care rather than a federal health-care bill. He described the states as laboratories where experimentation could take place.

Photo: The Daily Caller / Paxton Delany

“We need to restore a constitutionally limited government,” Lee told The Daily Caller. “We need to restore an environment where people respect their respective branches of government and the limits on the power of each branch. We also need to respect the distinction between state power and federal power.”