The emerging plan, worked out with GOP members Friday, would add several provisions that would roll back the executive order the President announced in November to a nearly $40 billion funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security.
House Republican leaders agreed to a strategy pushed by House conservatives who want to use their chief power — the power over the purse — to force changes in the President’s immigration policies, which they argue are unconstitutional. Many expected the spending bill debate to reignite the fight over the most recent action Obama took to allow roughly 5 million undocumented workers in the country to stay. But the latest plan is much broader and reaches back to try and nullify other executive actions taken by the Obama Administration in the last several years.
After a series of meetings with GOP members pushing various proposals, Republican leaders decided to allow separate votes on amendments pushed that repeal or change the Administration’s immigration laws. These would be added to the Homeland Security spending bill. That agency runs out of money at the end of February.
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The Department of Homeland Security runs out of funds at the end of February, so There is some time for the process to play out on Capitol Hill. But Democrats are already pointing out that at a time when the focus is on the terror attack in Paris it is critical the agency’s budget not be at risk.
“House Republicans have decided to threaten a partial government shutdown and play politics with the security of our homeland by appeasing the anti-immigrant and extreme right-wing of their Party,” Drew Hammill, a spokesman for House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said in a statement.
Ted Barrett contributed to this report.
