Thread: Drudge Report: WILL HE BE STOPPED? GOP lawmakers tear into each over strategy to bloc

Drudge Report

WILL HE BE STOPPED?




GOP lawmakers tear into each over strategy to block amnesty order
They arguing over whether to insert language into spending legislation that would bar immigration agencies from using federal funds to implement Obama's...
www.dailymail.co.uk

GOP factions tear into each other over strategy to block Obama's amnesty order

• Obama is expect to issue roughly 5 million illegal immigrants work permits
• Conservative lawmakers want to use spending legislation to bar immigration agencies from using their funding to for the executive order
• The House Appropriations Committee, led by chairman Hal Rogers, said today they legally can't do that
• A GOP aide told MailOnline that is 'absurd and patently false'
• Establishment Republicans are worried that route will lead to a shutdown

By Francesca Chambers for MailOnline
Published: 14:31 EST, 20 November 2014 | Updated: 16:53 EST, 20 November 2014
1.6k shares

A disagreement between Republican lawmakers over a proposed strategy to block President Barack Obama's coming immigration mandate took a nasty turn on Thursday as a battle between two powerful factions of the GOP spilled into the press.
On one side of the ring are conservative lawmakers, including Rep. Matt Salmon of Arizona and Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, who want to insert language into future spending legislation that bars immigration agencies from using their funding to issue the roughly 5 million new work permits the president is expected to authorize tomorrow.
At the other end are moderates, like House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, who don't want to disrupt the budget process or risk another government shutdown.
If Congress does not pass a new bill disbursing federal funds before Dec. 12, the government will undergo a partial shutdown, with other essential services and staff remaining in place until a new resolution is adopted.

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Leading the charge: Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, right, who is set to become chairman of the upper chamber's budget committee next Congress, is a key proponent of a conservative strategy to block the president's immigration order through a federal spending bill. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, left, is trying to smack him down

Salmon and 62 other House Republicans sent a letter to Rogers and ranking member on the appropriations committee Nita Lowey last week to urge them to use the upcoming spending legislation 'to prohibit the use of funds by the administration for the implementation of current or future executive actions that would create additional work permits and green cards outside of the scope prescribed by Congress.'
Obama's intended actions 'would be in direct violation of U.S. law,' they wrote, and Congress should use its 'power of the purse' to stop him 'from implementing policies that are contrary to our laws and the desire of the American people.'
Signed by vocal Tea Partiers such as Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Louie Gohmert of Texas, Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, and Steve King of Iowa, the letter echos a similar strategy proposed by Sessions in the Senate.
Sessions, who will likely ascend to chairman of the Senate's budget committee in the next Congress, has argued that tying the Department of Homeland Security's funding to the president's immigration order is the best way to keep the president from following through with his plan.
'Congress appropriates the money,' Sessions told reporters last week. 'That's a clear constitutional power.
'If Congress disapproves of the president providing ID cards for people who've been in the country illegally, then it should not appropriate money to fund it.'

Sessions favors the approach outlined by his colleagues in the House. But in the event the Senate's current Democratic leadership turns it down, he prefers a short-term continuing resolution to fully fund the government through early next year.
At that point, Republicans who won seats in the midterm elections will have already been sworn in, padding the GOP's numbers in both chambers, and the Senate in particular.
Republicans currently hold just 45 seats in the Senate. That number will swell to 53 - potentially 54 depending on the outcome of a Dec. 6 run-off election in Louisiana - making the GOP the majority party.
At that point Republicans would only be a few Democratic votes shy of a filibuster-proof coalition that could pass long-term legislation funding every aspect of the government but those operations sanctioned DHS.
Funding for DHS would be contingent on Obama agreeing to counteract his immigration order by signing the spending bill expressly restricting government money from going toward new green cards and work permits.
The game plan sets up a scenario in which a shutdown could occur early next year if Senate Democrats refuse to go along with the GOP's scheme or Obama withholds his signature from the legislation.
Establishment members of the Republican caucus worry that's exactly what will happen if they go down this path and would like to see immigration untangled from the budget process.
While they are in complete agreement that Obama is overstepping his constitutional authority needs to be reigned in, many of them do not believe the spending debate is the proper avenue to air those grievances.
A shutdown may not have the intended result and could backfire on the GOP the way it did last year when Congress allowed the government to close for the first half of October. Polling afterward showed that the vast majority of Americans blamed Republicans for the mishap.
A conservative Senate aide involved in developing the strategy told MailOnline that if Republicans took the two-prong approach to passing the budget, a shutdown would be highly unlikely.
As long as the president signed the overarching legislation that funds every department but DHS, those agencies would stay up and running through the agreed upon date. Only DHS would technically shut down if Obama vetoed the second bill.
And in all actuality, the aide said, much of its operations would continue given that many are deemed ‘essential.' That includes the divisions that handle border patrol, as well as customs and enforcement.



Comprehensive immigration reform advocates rally outside the White House in Washington, D.C. in this Nov. 7 photo. The president is expected to announce tonight that he will sign an executive order halting deportations for millions of illegal immigrants

Attempting to put the spending fight to bed, Rogers and other legislators on the appropriations committee issued a statement shooting down tea partiers' strategy, claiming that the legislative branch doesn't have the jurisdiction to cut off funding for the government bureaucracy that would be tasked with carrying out the president's executive order.
'The primary agency for implementing the president’s new immigration executive order is the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). This agency is entirely self-funded through the fees it collects on various immigration applications,' a statement sent out by the committee said.
'Congress does not appropriate funds for any of its operations, including the issuance of immigration status or work permits, with the exception of the ‘E-Verify’ program,' it explained. 'Therefore, the appropriations process cannot be used to “defund” the agency.
'The agency has the ability to continue to collect and use fees to continue current operations, and to expand operations as under a new executive order, without needing legislative approval by the Appropriations Committee or the Congress, even under a continuing resolution or a government shutdown.'
According to Salmon, Rogers also tried to tell conservatives that if they passed a bill now funding the government, they could always take back the money later if they didn't like how the president was using it.
'Chairman Rogers just got up and said if we pass an omnibus and then the president does this executive amnesty, he said we can rescind it...and we don't need the president,' Salmon told Breitbart News on Tuesday.
'That's what he just told me. I've never heard that before,' he stated.
A GOP congressional aide who spoke to MailOnline that 'rescission' is also bogus and is not possible.

McConnell promises to thwart Obama's immigration plan



Video at the page link:

The aide also said Rogers claim that Congress doesn't have the authority to regulate Citizenship and Immigration Services 'absurd and patently false.'
By their logic, the President could do virtually anything it wants if the actions are funded by fees, and Congress would be powerless to stop him,' the aide said.
'There is simply no way that is the case. What’s really going on here is there are some who want their corporate-backed spending bill so badly they’d even resort to making ridiculous claims like this.'
This afternoon Sen. Sessions also sent a statement to reporters explaining that House appropriators were off base.
'On its face, the suggestion that the White House can implement any unlawful and unconstitutional act so long as it pays for it with assessed fees is just plain wrong,' he said.
'The USCIS union president has already warned that the agency lacks the resources to properly screen applicants now—and he stressed just last month that the President’s executive amnesty would make the situation "exponentially worse—and more dangerous," ' Sessions argued.
Continuing, he said, 'the American people’s Congress has the power and every right to deny funding for unworthy activities. It is a routine and constitutional application of congressional power.
'There is no question that Congress has the power to block this expenditure and no doubt that it can be done.'
The real question here, he said, is 'whether or not Democratic Senators will finally stand up to the President' by passing a resolution that would effectively block his amnesty measures.

Read more: GOP Rep. Hal Rogers Floats 'Rescission' Plan To Combat Executive Amnesty

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Obviously Leaders Boehner and McConnell had no coordinated plan for responding, after at least 5 months of being telegraphed that this was coming. Hearing at least 5 republicans individual responses they are so fractured I find it hard to believe in a real response coming, but a lot of meaningless threats.


Hope to see Boehner and McConnell making a joint announcement by noon displaying a meaningful plan.