New York Times
By Ashley Parker
January 8, 2015
House
Republicans moved Thursday to create a bill that would fund most of the
Department of Homeland Security while preventing President Obama from
carrying out his recent
executive action on immigration, in an effort to appease their more
conservative members.
If
that approach passes the House, however, it is unlikely to clear the
Senate, where Republicans will need at least half a dozen Democratic
votes to overcome a filibuster.
And even if the Senate approves the measure, Mr. Obama has threatened
to veto Republican legislation that would undo his immigration action.
Funding for the department is set to run out at the end of February,
something both parties hope to avoid.
Many
conservatives see the funding bill as their best leverage to undo Mr.
Obama’s immigration plan, which will allow as many as five million
undocumented immigrants to
live and work in the country.
“The
House will soon take action aimed at stopping the president’s
unilateral action when it comes to immigration,” Speaker John A. Boehner
of Ohio said. “I said we’d
fight it tooth and nail when we had new majorities in the House and
Senate, and I meant it.”
The
House leadership held several private meetings with lawmakers on
Wednesday and Thursday, talking through a range of proposals.
At
the end of the last Congress, Representative Harold Rogers, Republican
of Kentucky and chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said
that his committee did not
have the authority to withhold money from Citizenship and Immigration
Services, which is tasked with carrying out most of the president’s
executive action, because the agency is funded by the fees it collects
from immigration applications.
But
now, House Republicans are likely to align behind a plan, similar to
one offered by Representative Mick Mulvaney, Republican of South
Carolina, that would prevent
the president from using any money, including those fees, to move ahead
with his immigration measure.
“I’d
look to see an amendment that would change the basic law in order to
give the Congress jurisdiction of the fees,” Mr. Rogers said Thursday.
“But how the details of
that are put together are still under discussion.”
Another
proposal, spearheaded by Representative Robert B. Aderholt, Republican
of Alabama and a member of the Appropriations Committee, would nullify
Mr. Obama’s executive
action on immigration from last year and prevent him from taking any
new unilateral steps. Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama and
an outspoken opponent of an immigration overhaul, has signaled that he
supports Mr. Aderholt’s legislation, and Senator
Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin and chairman of the Homeland
Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, is offering similar
legislation in the Senate.
But
even with their new majority, Senate Republicans are unlikely to have
the muscle to pass the House version. “I will say there is a good
possibility that the Senate
could do something different, but at the same time, we don’t want to
negotiate against ourselves because, as I say, there are some Senate
seats that are going to be up next time,” Mr. Aderholt said. “There are a
lot of people who support immigration reform
but don’t want the way the president did it.”
Mr.
Boehner said similarly that after the House passes its own bill, “we’ll
see what the Senate can do with it, and then we’ll act.”
In
last year’s broad spending bill, Republicans pushed successfully for
the shorter-term funding for Homeland Security based on the belief that
they would have more leverage
with the president once they controlled both chambers.
But finding a way to keep the agency operating and strip funding selectively to block Mr. Obama’s directive may prove tricky.
Stephanie
Faile, a spokeswoman for Mr. Mulvaney, said he would work “hard to
defeat any ‘show votes’ or other empty gestures that do not accomplish
the goal that so many
Republicans, and so many citizens, support.”
Representative
Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, was quick to
criticize Republicans who would “play politics” with the funding bill.
“How do we honor
our oath to protect and defend passing a Homeland Security bill without
getting involved in the issue of the president’s authority to have an
executive order to protect immigrants in our country?” she asked.
Republican
leaders in the House and Senate have dismissed concerns about a fight
that could lead to defunding the entire Homeland Security agency. “At
the end of the day,
we’re going to fund the department, obviously,” Senator Mitch McConnell
of Kentucky, the majority leader, said Wednesday.
House
Republicans are hoping to vote on their legislation as early as next
week, before they and their Senate colleagues depart for a retreat in
Hershey, Pa.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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