New York Times
By Ashley Parker
November 18, 2014
WASHINGTON
— Americans for Prosperity, a group founded by the billionaire Koch
brothers, has held informal conversations with Republican lawmakers on
Capitol Hill in recent weeks, cautioning
them against fighting President Obama’s promised executive order on
immigration with a strategy that could lead to a government shutdown.
Gov.
Chris Christie of New Jersey echoed that sentiment on Monday in a
private meeting of newly elected House members. And in an op-ed article,
Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity,
urged Republican lawmakers to “carefully develop a strategy” for the
areas that most directly affect the economy and Americans.
On
Tuesday, House Republicans emerged from a closed meeting coalescing
around two plans that would fight an expected executive order on
immigration from Mr. Obama without fully shutting down
the government.
“We
went down the government shutdown route a year ago. It didn’t work, and
I think a lot of people that recall that don’t think it’s wise to
repeat that exercise,” Representative Tom Cole,
Republican of Oklahoma, said. “We’ve got a lot more than just a
sledgehammer in the toolbox, and so let’s use some of these other
weapons that we have.”
One
option floated by Representative Harold Rogers, Republican of Kentucky
and chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, calls for passing
his committee’s broad spending bill by a Dec.
11 deadline, and then rescinding funds for Mr. Obama’s executive
action.
The
other option, proposed by Representative Tom Price, Republican of
Georgia, calls for passing most of the broad spending bill but taking
out money for programs specifically related to Mr.
Obama’s planned immigration action and fighting the president with a
short-term stand-alone measure for those particular funds.
Mr.
Obama could announce as soon as this week an executive order that would
allow up to five million unauthorized immigrants to remain in the
country and work without fear of deportation.
“We
want the government fully funded, but that particular area needs to be
defunded,” Representative Michele Bachmann, Republican of Minnesota,
said. “We don’t want a government shutdown at
all, but we’re going to super-scalpel on that area where the president
is acting illegally.”
Representative
Matt Salmon, Republican of Arizona, said that his House colleagues were
considering a range of options that would avoid a shutdown while
fighting the president on immigration.
“Everything is on the table, and the speaker has committed that we’re
going to come up with a plan that does not allow the president to have
the funding to do this,” Mr. Salmon said.
Earlier,
Mr. Rogers had called on colleagues in an opinion article to pass his
committee’s spending bill “in a responsible, transparent and pragmatic
way, without the specter of government
shutdowns or the lurching, wasteful and unproductive budgeting caused
by temporary stopgap measures.”
Their
collective voice carried an unmistakable message for the more
conservative Republicans in Congress: Shutting down the government would
be a terrible way for the party to start its time
in power.
Americans
for Prosperity’s basic pitch to Republicans is: Do not let the
president’s immigration stance derail you from your ambitious governing
agenda. For those who want to fight Mr. Obama
on immigration, the group counsels, the best opportunity will come in
the next Congress, when Republicans will control both chambers, through
the “regular order” process of committee deliberation and full debate on
the floor.
“It
is important for the new Republican majority to stay focused on crucial
priorities like rolling back Obamacare, passing the Keystone pipeline
and other energy initiatives, and passing
a free-market budget,” said Mr. Phillips of Americans for Prosperity.
“That means not overreacting to executive orders by the president.”
The
16-day government shutdown in 2013 over the Affordable Care Act badly
damaged the Republicans’ standing, and many party elders and strategists
want to avoid a repeat.
In
his op-ed article in Roll Call, Mr. Rogers said Republicans had a
mandate “to work together, to govern, to stop the punting and
procrastinating, and to make the tough decisions and cast
the hard votes to accomplish the tasks they sent us to Washington to
do. Completing our lingering appropriations work quickly will help us
fulfill this mandate both now and in the months to come.”
Speaking
on the Senate floor on Monday, the majority leader, Harry Reid of
Nevada, said he had been having “productive, bipartisan conversations”
with Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of
Ohio, and Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, chairwoman
of the Appropriations Committee, about passing the spending bill.
“It’s
clear to me that Republican leaders want to work together to keep the
government funded,” Mr. Reid said. “I hope Republicans in Congress will
reject this brinkmanship. A scorched-earth
policy is no way to govern. Instead, responsible leaders within the
Republican Party need to work with Democrats to complete the business of
funding our government, regardless of when the president acts to keep
families together.”
Some
Republicans, however, including Mr. Boehner, have left the possibility
of a shutdown on the table. Representative Steve King, Republican of
Iowa, an outspoken opponent of an immigration
overhaul, is readying legislation to undo whatever action the president
takes, as well as to undo the protected status the president has
already provided to young immigrants brought here illegally as children.
“I’d
like to find a way we can keep as much of the government operating as
possible, but there’s no way that this Congress should go forward with
any appropriations that goes into any department
that reacts to the command of the president when he commands that they
violate the law or the Constitution,” Mr. King said last week. “So that
means that we can’t fund the branches of government that would be
executing his lawless, unconstitutional act, should
he commit it.”
On
Tuesday, Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Senate Republican,
echoed a concern among his colleagues, who believe that they have a
chance of passing their own immigration legislation
once Republicans control both chambers next Congress — but that any
unilateral action by the president would torpedo that hope.
“I
hope he will reconsider, decide to work with us in a bipartisan,
bicameral way to fix our broken immigration system,” Mr. Cornyn said.
“If he proceeds forward with his executive order,
it will squander the best opportunity we’ve had in a long time to make
progress.”
But
even Republicans who have been outspoken critics of what they view as
“executive amnesty,” as well as what they say is the president’s general
overstepping of his constitutional authority,
said that a government shutdown was not a savvy move for the party.
“I’m
just unalterably opposed to another government shutdown. I’m not going
to do that to my state, and I will do everything in my power to see that
we don’t shut down the government,” said
Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona. “There are lots of ways we
can respond, including going to court, including appropriations bills,
including the Budget Act. There are lots of the things we can do.
Shutting down the government should not be one of
the options.”
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