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Eli Kantor is a labor, employment and immigration law attorney. He has been practicing labor, employment and immigration law for more than 36 years. He has been featured in articles about labor, employment and immigration law in the L.A. Times, Business Week.com and Daily Variety. He is a regular columnist for the Daily Journal. Telephone (310)274-8216; eli@elikantorlaw.com. For more information, visit beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com and and beverlyhillsemploymentlaw.com

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Wednesday, November 19, 2014

In Immigration Fight, Republicans Explore Alternatives to a Shutdown

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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