Thread: Sessions and Congressional Researchers Reinforce Immigration Hawks Ahead of Crucial H

Sessions and Congressional Researchers Reinforce Immigration Hawks Ahead of Crucial House GOP Meeting

To counteract that, Sessions has marshaled a list of congressional actions, topped by a restriction that lawmakers passed last year on how money for USCIS might be used for the purpose of providing an immigrant integration grants program.

Doug Ross Journal
By Joel Gehrke
December 2, 2014

Senator Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) and the Congressional Research Service compiled a list of “17 separate restrictions on agencies’ use of fees in the consolidated appropriations bill for FY 2014” into a memo on the eve of a crucial meeting of House Republicans debating how to respond to President Obama’s administrative amnesty.

The restrictions were passed and signed into law as part of the omnibus spending bill last year with the cooperation of President Obama and Senate Democrats, a point that buttresses the immigration hawks’ argument that Congress can block funding for the implementation of Obama’s latest executive orders.

This memo marks the second time in a week that Sessions has turned to the Congressional Research Service for help in making the case that Congress should use the power of the purse to fight Obama.

“In either case, the funds available to the agency through fee collections would be subject to the same potential restrictions imposed by Congress on the use of its appropriations as any other type of appropriated funds,” the CRS announced last week, per Breitbart.

House Republican appropriators have argued that Congress can’t practically withhold finding for the U.S Citizenship and Immigration Service’s efforts to implement the orders because the initiative runs on fees. The Department of Homeland Security, notably, emphasized last year that — even in a government shutdown — “fee for service activities such as those performed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services” may continue.

To counteract that, Sessions has marshaled a list of congressional actions, topped by a restriction that lawmakers passed last year on how money for USCIS might be used for the purpose of providing an immigrant integration grants program.

“Notwithstanding section 1356(n) of title 8, United States Code, of the funds deposited into the Immigration Examinations Fee Account, $7,500,000 may be allocated by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services in fiscal year 2014 for the purpose of providing an immigrant integration grants program,” the first example on the memo reads.

House Republicans are meeting Tuesday morning to discuss their next move. The most aggressive of Obama’s opponents want the House to attempt to block the implementation of the immigration orders during the lame-duck session, even with Harry Reid still in control of the Senate. Alternatively, Republicans might decide to pass a short-term funding measure prevents the government from running out of money this month, yet leaves long-term policy decisions to the GOP-controlled Congress next year.

“The next 36 hours are going to be important,” House Republican Policy Committee chairman Luke Messer told Roll Call.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner...-crucial-house

Exclusive -- Congressional Research Service: Congress Has Power to Block Funding for Obama's Executive Amnesty

by Matthew Boyle 26 Nov 2014

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) has concluded that House Appropriations Committee chairman Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY) is wrong, and that Congress can in fact block funding for President Barack Obama’s executive amnesty order.

“In light of Congress’s constitutional power over the purse, the Supreme Court has recognized that ‘Congress may always circumscribe agency discretion to allocate resources by putting restrictions in the operative statutes,’” the CRS, a legislative authority on Capitol Hill, wrote in a report sent to incoming Senate Budget Committee chairman Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL). “Where Congress has done so, ‘an agency is not free simply to disregard statutory responsibilities.’ Therefore, if a statute were enacted which prohibited appropriated funds from being used for some specified purposes, then the relevant funds would be unavailable to be obligated or expended for those purposes.”

Sessions’ team provided the CRS report—which is not made public unless members of Congress who request such reports decide to make them so—exclusively to Breitbart News.

Rogers, last week, argued that Congress could not block funding for Obama’s executive amnesty because the agency that will be printing the work authorization and other documents for illegal aliens—U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)—operates primarily on fees it collects rather than from tax revenue collected by the federal government.
The House Appropriations Committee, which Rogers chairs, said in a statement last week:

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. 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. Therefore, the Appropriations process cannot be used to 'de-fund' 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.

But the CRS report that Sessions requested shows that is untrue. Even if an agency like USCIS operates on fees rather than tax revenues appropriated by Congress, the Congress can still block funding for the implementation of such matters as Obama’s executive amnesty. CRS wrote:

A fee-funded agency or activity typically refers to one in which the amounts appropriated by Congress for that agency or activity are derived from fees collected from some external source. Importantly, amounts received as fees by federal agencies must still be appropriated by Congress to that agency in order to be available for obligation or expenditure by the agency. In some cases, this appropriation is provided through the annual appropriations process. In other instances, it is an appropriation that has been enacted independently of the annual appropriations process (such as a permanent appropriation in an authorizing act). In either case, the funds available to the agency through fee collections would be subject to the same potential restrictions imposed by Congress on the use of its appropriations as any other type of appropriated funds.

Cutting the legalese language here, basically this means that, no matter how USCIS gets it money—even if it’s from a prior authorization appropriation that is permanent and based on fee collection—Congress can still restrict the use of that money for some purposes.

On the night Obama announced the amnesty—last Thursday—Sessions said that the House of Representatives must lead by passing a government funding bill that blocks any money being spent on Obama’s amnesty.

“The House should send the Senate a government funding bill which ensures no funds can be spent for this unlawful purpose,” Sessions said. “If [Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid’s Senate Democrats vote to surrender their own institution to an imperial dictate and block the measure, then the House should send a short-term funding measure so the new GOP majority can be sworn in and pass a funding bill with the needed language.”

The Conservative Review’s Daniel Horowitz laid out on Tuesday how one of the things “lost amidst the hullabaloo of mob rule in Ferguson” is that the GOP is planning to “capitulate” to Obama’s amnesty. Part of that caving by Speaker John Boehner to Obama on executive amnesty, Horowitz notes, is that Republicans will promise to fight later—but won’t block the funding of it now.

“This strategy allows GOP leaders to promise a fight three months from now, after Obama’s executive action becomes more entrenched, without having to fight on defund immediately,” Horowitz wrote. “It will also buy them time to work on the second step: negotiating with Obama to pass amnesty legislatively.”

If Rogers—or other top allies of Speaker Boehner like 2012 GOP vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)—don’t block the funding of Obama’s executive amnesty, they could face dire consequences.

“Some Kentucky Tea Party activists are already talking about a primary challenge to Representative Harold Rogers, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, who has been in office since 1981,” the New York Times’ Jeremy Peters wrote on Tuesday. “Breitbart News, a conservative website, reported on the possible primary challenger this week. Mr. Rogers’ office has said Congress could not simply defund the president’s directive, because the agency that carries it out, Citizenship and Immigration Services, is not financed by appropriations but by the fees it generates.”

Later in the story, Peters noted that Ryan and even Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) could face primary challenges in 2016.

“Other potential primary targets, Tea Party groups say, are Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the 2012 Republican vice-presidential nominee, and even Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, who was elected initially with the help of Tea Party energy,” Peters wrote.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Governm...ing-For-Obamas

Sometimes I believe Sessions is the only friend we have looking out for the interests of the People.