Politico
By Seung Min Kim
January 7, 2015
House Republicans are ready to fire the opening salvo in the war over President Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration.
House
leadership plans to move as early as next week on legislation to
override Obama’s actions that could protect millions of undocumented
immigrants from deportations.
That move is likely to be paired with spending for the Department of
Homeland Security, which got only short-term funding from an agreement
in December.
The
GOP strategy — emerging just one day after Republicans officially took
over both chambers of Congress — follows through on the party’s promise
last year to strike
back at Obama on immigration. Republicans chose to defer that fight to
early this year, when the GOP would be in complete power.
But
Republicans will also have to balance retaliating against Obama for his
executive actions — which the GOP views as an unconstitutional
overreach — and ensuring that
DHS stays open and funded. That delicate balance was made even more
clear Wednesday, when a terror attack at a satirical publication in
Paris left a dozen people dead.
“If
we want to target immigration to retaliate against the president,
that’s fine,” said Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.). “But we have to make it
clear that Homeland Security,
at a time when we saw this massive attack in Paris, that we can’t be
cutting funding or programs which would protect Americans from a
terrorist attack.”
Congressional
Republicans are very unlikely to let DHS funding lapse. Senate Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) stressed to reporters Wednesday: “At the
end of the
day, we’re going to fund the department.”
Speaker
John Boehner and House Republicans are planning to try to choke off
money for the executive action next week, with legislation to fund DHS
most likely tied to
language to limit funding for carrying out Obama’s executive action.
No
final strategy decisions have been made, and it’s not clear what
language the GOP leadership will ultimately use. But Rules Committee
Chairman Pete Sessions (R-Texas)
described one possible companion bill on Wednesday: a measure written
by Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.) that would explicitly bar any funds —
even those collected by fees — to be used to carry out Obama’s
immigration actions.
But other ideas are being batted around.
Rep.
Martha Roby (R-Ala.) has introduced legislation that essentially
mirrors Mulvaney’s measure. Fellow Alabama Republican Rep. Robert
Aderholt finalized a bill — which
has attracted more than a dozen GOP sponsors — that would combat
Obama’s executive actions on immigration, toughen enforcement on
undocumented immigrants and deal with the surge of unaccompanied migrant
children who arrived in record numbers at the southern
border last summer. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), the incoming chairman of
the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, plans to
offer legislation similar to Aderholt’s in the Senate, a Johnson aide
said.
To
that end, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) huddled with
several House Republicans in his office Wednesday to chart out potential
strategy on what to
do with the DHS funding bill, which is tentatively planned to hit the
floor early next week before congressional Republicans leave for their
joint retreat in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
No
decisions were made at that afternoon meeting, according to lawmakers
who attended, and House Republicans are set to meet again Thursday to
continue to strategize.
“I think we all agree on the goal,” Mulvaney said. “And the goal is to undo the president’s unconstitutional actions.”
Funding
for DHS runs through Feb. 27. That Boehner, McCarthy and House
Republicans are acting this early shows that they want plenty of time to
calculate strategy before
that deadline to bring up the bill.
But
Republicans will face hurdles beyond House passage of the DHS funding
package. For one, Obama is almost certain to issue a veto threat for any
legislation that undoes
his sweeping immigration actions, which would shield upward of 5
million undocumented immigrants from being deported and grant them work
permits. A major slice of that population is parents of U.S. citizens or
green-card holders who currently do not have legal
status but have been here for at least five years.
It’s
also unclear whether legislation overriding Obama’s executive actions
could reach the 60-vote threshold to clear a filibuster in the Senate.
Republicans will need
the help of at least a handful of Senate Democrats to advance
legislation, and although several moderate Democrats expressed
opposition to Obama going at it alone on immigration, it’s far from
certain whether they would actively help Republicans gut the executive
actions.
So where Republicans go from there after legislation passes the House remains in question.
“If
the president were to shut down Homeland Security to get his narrow
political objectives done, then I think the president’s making a big
mistake,” Sessions said. He
waved off a potential veto threat, stressing: “We are going to stick to
our plan, and we believe it is wrong what the president has done.”
Still, other lawmakers struck a cautious tone.
“I’m
a real optimist,” Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), a key player in
immigration efforts, said Wednesday. “But I don’t think I’m optimistic
enough to tell you that
it’s going to be over real quick.”
Speaking
to television reporters in the wake of the attacks in Paris, Homeland
Security Secretary Jeh Johnson urged lawmakers to give his agency a full
appropriations
bill, rather than the short-term funding leash that DHS is currently
running under.
“We
cannot continue through the course of the year to function on a
continuing resolution,” Johnson said. “That poses real risk to homeland
security. There are initiatives,
new starts, that need to be funded in my department in an
appropriations bill for fiscal year 2015 that are very important to
homeland security.”
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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