-GOP Strategy to Stop Obama’s Executive Amnesty Emerging
-Exclusive — Report: Obama’s Executive Amnesty Will Give Illegal Aliens Public Benefits
Democrats Could Face Dire Consequences for Supporting Executive Amnesty
-Judge: Obama’s Executive Amnesty Would Be “Playing With Constitutional Fire”
Child Apprehensions at the Border Went Up Nearly 5% Last Month
17 Nov 2014 by John Sexton
You won’t find it spelled on the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol website but apprehensions of unaccompanied children on the southwest border went up nearly 5% between September and October.
Friday the Border Patrol website added the childhood and family apprehension numbers for October, the first month FY15. Rather than present the data for consecutive months, the site presents the October figures beside data from the previous October. The result is a dramatic decline in so-called UAC apprehensions of 40%.
Anyone looking at the drop would probably assume the problem of unaccompanied children on the border is over. That conclusion would no doubt be helpful to the White House as it prepares to roll out another executive action deferring deportations. In fact, the number of UAC apprehensions is still about 8% higher than it was for the same month two years ago. It’s also up compared to the previous month.
According to the Border Patrol site there were 2,529 UACs apprehended in October. The accurate figure for September doesn’t seem to have been published on the site yet, but you can deduce it by taking the FY14 figure from this page (68,541) and subtracting the figure on this page which includes the total for the first 11 months of FY14 (66,127). The result is that there were 2,414 UAC’s apprehended in September of this year. And that means apprehensions actually went up 4.7% from September to October.
Border Patrol also presents figures for family unit apprehensions for October which the site shows dropped 10% compared to the previous October. Here again, you can work out that there were 2,303 family apprehensions in September vs. 2,163 in October. That’s still a decline but only about 6% month-to-month. It’s not very significant given the 361% increase in family apprehensions overall in FY14.
After the surge in children and families arriving from Central America became news this summer the Obama administration put together a plan designed to discourage the flow of immigrants. The campaign focused on the danger inherent in crossing Mexico unaccompanied and also clarified that new arrivals would not be eligible for deferred action.
A spokesman for Customs and Border Patrol could not say when the full data breaking down apprehensions by month and sector would be available for FY14.
http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2014/11/17/Child-Apprehensions-at-the-Border-Went-Up-Nearly-5-Last-Month
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Democrats Could Face Dire Consequences for Supporting Executive Amnesty
Reid urges Obama to delay U.S. immigration move
18 Nov 2014 by Matthew Boyle
The political repercussions for supporting President Barack Obama’s planned executive amnesty could be so massive they could put Democratic U.S. Senate seats in bright blue states in play for Republicans in 2016—an open secret that Democrats on Capitol Hill seem to already know.
It’s also something Republicans seem to be gearing up to ensure Democrats don’t get away with, given the massive unpopularity of the move the president says he’s about to make.
“On November 4, the American people voted for a change in Washington. President Obama does not seem to have gotten the message,” incoming National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) chairman Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) told Breitbart News on Monday. “The President and his liberal allies in Congress continue to believe we have an imminent deportation crisis. The reality is that we have a border security crisis. The president should work with the new Republican Congress and not act by executive decree – an opinion that most Americans also share with us.”
This comes as on MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell on Monday night, solidly liberal Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) was completely stumped when asked what he thought was the legal authority for Obama’s planned executive amnesty—specifically the handing of work permits to illegal aliens.
“No one at the White House has been able to give me the legal justification for the following component of the president’s plan which was leaked to the New York Times, the part where it says—and just to be clear at the outset, most of this is just prosecutorial discretion, it’s just law enforcement discretion, every chief executive has that from mayors to governors, police chiefs have that,” O’Donnell began asking Welch. “We understand most of it is just completely within the president’s power. The part that’s questionable is the part where the New York Times says that the president will allow many parents of children who are American citizens or legal residents to obtain legal work documents.”
“Can you tell me, and has the White House told you, what is the legal justification for the president to create a new category of beneficiaries for work documents?” O’Donnell asked. “How can that be done without legislation?”
Welch was flabbergasted.
“You know, Lawrence, I can’t tell you,” Welch said. “And I’m not the lawyer who’s going to be litigating this case. So the answer to that will be decided by the courts as you and I know. But here’s what I can tell you—“
O’Donnell, unsatisfied with the non-answer, cut across Welch. “So, Congressman, as far you know, and I don’t mean to badger you about this but I’ve been on this for days now,” O’Donnell said. “I haven’t found a single elected Democrat, not one Democrat in Washington, who can answer the question that I just put to you. Have you heard it answered by any Democrats?”
“I haven’t,” Welch replied. “I haven’t.”
To hear Politico tell it, former President Bill Clinton—one of the Democrats’ top surrogates in the 2014 campaign cycle—thinks Obama waiting to enact his planned executive amnesty cost Democrats the election. Politico’s Maggie Haberman wrote that Clinton told the outlet’s top Washington scribe Mike Allen at an event in Little Rock, Arkansas, late last week “that President Barack Obama’s decision not to sign an executive order on immigration may have played a role in keeping some Hispanic voters at home.” Haberman did so under a blaring headline: “Clinton: No Obama immigration action may have hurt in midterms.”
But Clinton’s full comments seem to tell a different story about the matter.
Clinton said there was a “little bit of a loss of the Hispanic vote, perhaps because the president didn’t issue the immigration order.”
“But it was a tough call for him because had he done so then a lot of the others would have lost by even more,” Clinton said. “It was a difficult call.”
Clinton admits that many Democrats lose big politically if they’re tied to an effort by Obama to circumvent the nation’s laws to grant executive amnesty to millions of illegal aliens. At a different point in his back and forth with Politico’s Allen, Clinton added another jab at the president’s plans for an executive amnesty, saying Obama should try to work with Congress on immigration.
“I think he should minimize the chances of being a lame duck,” Clinton said of Obama. “Which he can do by continuing to have an agenda and using the budget process to make deals with the Republicans because now that they have both houses, they have a much greater vested interest in not just being against everything.”
“Once you get the budget process, you acquire certain responsibilities,” Clinton added. “So I hope he can pass immigration reform now and I think he can. I hope he can pass a tax reform measure and get some of that money back from overseas and put it into an infrastructure bank. There are five or six other things I think he could do. And I hope his people will keep coming up with new things.”
The language that Clinton was using—talking about having “immigration reform” that could “pass”—is very specific Washington-speak for taking a bill through Congress, especially in the context of Obama seeking to “make deals with the Republicans.” That means Clinton quite clearly thinks Obama should look at legislative options—even though he’s not clear about what Obama should do in terms of executive options.
After Republicans took control of the U.S. Senate in the midterm elections, the 2016 cycle has an electoral map that’s not as favorable to the GOP as the 2014 map was. Incumbent Democrats facing re-election will include California’s Barbara Boxer, Colorado’s Michael Bennet, Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal, Hawaii’s Brian Schatz, Maryland’s Barbara Mikulski, Nevada’s Harry Reid, New York’s Chuck Schumer, Oregon’s Ron Wyden, Vermont’s Patrick Leahy, and Washington state’s Patty Murray.
Meanwhile, Republicans up for re-election will include Alabama’s Richard Shelby, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, Arizona’s John McCain, Arkansas’s John Boozman, Florida’s Marco Rubio, Georgia’s Johnny Isakson, Idaho’s Mike Crapo, Illinois’s Mark Kirk, Indiana’s Dan Coats, Iowa’s Chuck Grassley, Kansas’s Jerry Moran, Kentucky’s Rand Paul, Missouri’s Roy Blunt, New Hampshire’s Kelly Ayotte, North Carolina’s Richard Burr, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, Ohio’s Rob Portman, Oklahoma’s James Lankford, Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey, South Carolina’s Tim Scott, South Dakota’s John Thune, Utah’s Mike Lee, and Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson. The Louisiana U.S. Senate seat currently held by Republican David Vitter, which will open up and likely be filled by an appointment assuming Vitter wins the governor’s race in the Pelican State, will also be in play.
Depending on what happens in the Louisiana U.S. Senate runoff on Dec. 6 between Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and incumbent Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu—a race Cassidy is expected to win—Republicans could either have 54 or 53 seats in the U.S. Senate for the next two years. It’s a decent three-or-four-seat majority, but with the aforementioned 2016 elections around the corner, Republicans are going to have their work cut out for them to defend the majority. It’s probably safe to say the Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Kansas, Louisiana, and North Dakota seats will remain Republican. But that leaves 10 Republican incumbents in likely-to-be-tough races, while the 10 incumbent Democrats up for re-election will each be tough to unseat.
If Democrats don’t screw up too badly over the next two years, they have a good chance of taking back the Senate Majority in 2016—no matter what happens with the presidential elections. Unless, of course, Republicans find a key issue to beat them with—and that issue just might be immigration, especially if the party moves in the populist direction that incoming Senate Budget Committee chairman Sen. Jeff Sessions has been practically screaming the party needs to go in.
Despite efforts by some in the mainstream media to paint Democrats in Congress as unified behind Obama’s planned executive amnesty for millions of illegal aliens, they’re not.
Almost every single incumbent Senate Democrat who survived the 2014 Republican wave came out forcefully against President Obama’s planned executive immigration action. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) said during the final debate against former Sen. Scott Brown that she doesn’t “think the president should take any action on immigration.” Landrieu, who may not survive in the end but lasted through the first round of Louisiana’s jungle primary, said recently, “I do not support executive action.”
Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), who barely survived a surprisingly close challenge from establishment Republican Ed Gillespie—who ran in support of amnesty—said that “immigration reform needs to happen legislatively” and he was “troubled” by Obama’s plans.
Even Sen. Al Franken (D-MN), whose Republican challenger Mike McFadden lost by more than 10 points, said he has “concerns about executive action.”
“This is a job for Congress, and it’s time for the House to act,” Franken said.
In addition, on Monday, outgoing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid organized a letter to President Obama where a handful of Senate Democrats threw their support behind Obama’s planned executive amnesty.
“We strongly support your plan to improve as much of the immigration system as you can within your legal authority, and will stand behind you to support changes to keep families together while continuing to enforce our immigration laws in a way that protects our national security and public safety,” the small group of Senate Democrats wrote to the president.
It’s not surprising that Reid supports this action by Obama. What’s surprising about the effort by Reid is that he only managed to get his fellow Senate Democratic leadership team to sign the letter, while the vast majority of Senate Democrats conference wide aren’t putting their own political futures on the line backing Obama here.
The signers of the Democrat letter include Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, Democratic conference vice chairman Chuck Schumer, outgoing Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chairman Michael Bennet, outgoing Senate Budget Committee chairwoman Patty Murray, and New Jersey’s Bob Menendez. Four of those six Democrats were original cosponsors of the Senate’s “Gang of Eight” amnesty bill.
On this letter, there is no signature from Liz Warren—the supposed “populist” Democrat from Massachusetts. Shaheen, after barely surviving a challenge from Republican Scott Brown—who ran aggressively on immigration and came within 3.2 points of beating Shaheen—did not sign it either. Neither did Tammy Baldwin, Richard Blumenthal, Barbara Boxer, Sherrod Brown, Joe Donnelly, Dianne Feinstein, Kirsten Gillibrand, Claire McCaskill, Barbara Mikulski, Bill Nelson, or Jon Tester.
That Reid, the leader of the Democratic Party in the U.S. Senate, was able only to secure five signatures from fellow Democrats is noteworthy. Reid spokesman Adam Jentleson hasn’t responded to a request for comment on why more Democrats didn’t sign the letter.
It’s also noteworthy that four of the six signers of the Reid letter, including Reid himself, are up for re-election in 2016. Schumer, Murray, and Bennet will also face the voters. Reid barely survived a tough challenge from rookie candidate Sharron Angle in 2010, and after that close call Republicans are sure to put up a better fight against him in 2016. Voters in Bennet’s Colorado just sent Democratic Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) packing in favor of Republican senator-elect Cory Gardner, and Murray’s Washington or Schumer’s New York could always break for a Republican if the right candidate emerges in the right situation around the right issues.
If Republicans handle the issue of immigration correctly as Obama determines how to make his move, they could shore up many of those incumbent seats across the board with the issue—especially if they get behind the populist-style immigration policies from Sessions. They could also turn those Democratic seats that are up in 2016 into competitive races.
Oregon, where Wyden is running for re-election, just passed with 66 percent of the vote a measure to block illegal aliens from getting driver’s licenses. Maryland, where Mikulski faces re-election, just elected a Republican governor. Hawaii’s Schatz isn’t even safe from this in a solidly Democratic state, as one of the state’s two congressional seats turned out to be a less-than-two-point race in the end. And in Connecticut, Blumenthal may be in jeopardy as Republicans made some major gains using this issue in other parts of New England in the 2014 election cycle.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/11/18/Democratic-Repercussions-For-Supporting-Obama-s-Planned-Executive-Amnesty-Could-Be-Massive
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Exclusive — Report: Obama’s Executive Amnesty Will Give Illegal Aliens Public Benefits
Obama says he will take action on immigration by year’s end
17 Nov 2014 by Matthew Boyle
Illegal aliens who get President Barack Obama’s likely forthcoming executive amnesty will have immediate access to welfare and other public benefits, according to a new report from the Federation of American Immigration Reform (FAIR) exclusively provided to Breitbart News ahead of its public release shows.
“Obama’s executive amnesty isn’t only unconstitutional but costly; from day one it opens up federal and state benefits to individuals who are still illegal aliens, regardless of the label the President puts on them,” FAIR executive director Julie Kirchner told Breitbart News.
“Deferred action and parole-in-place don’t fit neatly into statutory definitions that prohibit access to benefits, mostly because deferred action and parole-in-place have no statutory basis themselves,” FAIR communications director Bob Dane added. “Congress has never imagined a rouge president pulling rabbits out of a hat to justify a broad, transformational makeover of the country by way of amnesty. There will always be thousands of loopholes in the law and backdoor methods to achieve a desired agenda, but ultimately the intent of Congress is preeminent. It may be that the courts will have to review that.”
It’s likely that the administration will attempt to downplay access executive amnestied illegal aliens will have to public benefits in the wake of the president’s announcement since Republicans will seize on the issue to discredit the president’s efforts. It’s a wildly politically successful issue for Republicans, as even Massachusetts’ Republican Governor-elect Charlie Baker ran on making sure Americans are taken care of with public benefits rather than giving them to illegal immigrants—as Democrats want to do.
Both Republicans and Democrats who supported the “Gang of Eight” bill in 2013 argued it wouldn’t allow access to public benefits for amnestied illegal aliens. But a series of reports from the office of now incoming Senate Budget Committee chairman Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and others detailed how it would in fact allow them to get benefits that normally go to Americans and legal immigrants. That seems to be the same thing that’s happening here, with the president’s forthcoming executive amnesty—assuming the president goes through with his stated plans.
The seven-page report from FAIR details how either of the two major mechanisms through which Obama would grant the executive amnesty to millions of illegal aliens would ultimately end up with those millions of illegal aliens taking U.S. taxpayer benefits away from struggling Americans almost immediately.
“While the President has been considering numerous options for his executive amnesty, there are two methods President Obama is expected to use in order to shield illegal aliens from deportation: parole and deferred action,” the report summary reads.
Obama could give the millions of illegal aliens “humanitarian parole,” something the FAIR report notes is included in statute as a power of the executive branch under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) for “temporary” protections for people from outside the United States. But the Bill Clinton administration in 1998, via a Department of Justice (DOJ) memo, expanded the meaning of “humanitarian parole” to illegal aliens inside the U.S. That memo did not have any “statutory or regulatory basis,” FAIR wrote, but Obama has used it to grant “parole in place to illegal aliens and is expected to expand this practice.”
If that’s how Obama grants executive amnesty to the millions of illegal aliens he plans to, they’ll get near-immediate access to welfare and other public benefits.
“Aliens with parole generally receive work authorization and are eligible for most benefits under federal law,” FAIR wrote. “This is true regardless of whether they have humanitarian parole or parole in place because the eligibility rules for benefits programs make no distinction between the two. Indeed, the longer an alien’s parole, the more benefits he is eligible to receive.”
Aliens paroled for less than a year are eligible for benefits such as Obamacare and unemployment. In the text of Obamacare, the report notes, Congress specifically restricts access to anyone “lawfully present” in the United States. But, the report notes, “regulations implementing the law define ‘lawfully present’ to include aliens with parole for less than one year.”
“Not only are aliens with parole for less than one year eligible for Obamacare, they are immediately eligible,” FAIR wrote. “Despite the fact that Obamacare might appear to be a ‘federal public benefit,’ and thus restricted to ‘qualified aliens’ and the five-year bar, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has not included it in the regulatory definition of either ‘federal public benefit’ or ‘federal means-tested public benefit.’”
As such, FAIR wrote, there is “no conflict” between Obamacare and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) that specifies who is a “qualified alien” who can receive “federal public benefits.”
“This means that aliens may enroll if they are ‘lawfully present,’ and they are not required to be ‘qualified aliens’ nor wait five years to participate pursuant to the PRWORA restrictions,” FAIR wrote.
As for unemployment benefits, aliens with parole for less than a year are also eligible for those despite the fact that states administer unemployment benefits. That’s because state unemployment benefits are “based upon the Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA), which specifically says that aliens paroled into the U.S. for less than one year are eligible for unemployment benefits provided they otherwise meet the program’s other requirements.”
Such aliens who would get parole would also get immediate access to Social Security and Medicare benefits—meaning they could take Social Security or Medicare away from Americans—FAIR wrote, “so long as they meet other eligibility requirements.”
“By statute, Congress exempted retirement benefits under Social Security from the list of federal public benefits for which an alien must be a ‘qualified alien’ and wait five years for eligibility pursuant to PRWORA,” FAIR wrote. “Instead the Social Security Act only requires that aliens be ‘lawfully present.’ The regulation that defines ‘lawfully present’ for retirement benefits includes aliens paroled into the U.S. for less than one year.”
As for Medicare, the laws and regulations are similar to Social Security—meaning illegal aliens who would get parole status under an Obama amnesty would have almost immediate access to Medicare.
“Aliens with parole for less than a year are also eligible for Medicare,” FAIR wrote. “Medicare Part A (inpatient) benefits are available to aliens who are at least 65 years old and eligible for Social Security retirement (Title II) benefits if eligibility is based on authorized work history. As described above, aliens paroled into the U.S. for less than a year are eligible for retirement benefits under Social Security. Therefore, aliens with parole for less than one year who are eligible for Social Security based on authorized work history are eligible for Medicare Part A. In addition, individuals eligible for Medicare part A, including aliens with parole for less than a year, are also eligible for Medicare Part B (outpatient) and Part D (prescription drugs).”
Other public benefits such illegal aliens would have access to under Obama’s amnesty if he chooses the parole route are Medicaid and State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) benefits “in states that have opted to cover them” since Congress’ reauthorization of the relevant statute granted states “the option to offer health care benefits to ‘lawfully residing’ children (under the age of 21) and pregnant women through Medicaid and SCHIP.”
If Obama chooses to go the route of “deferred action,” another form of executive amnesty that has “no statutory basis,” the amnestied illegal aliens will have immediate access to Obamacare, Medicare and Social Security for the same reasons as they would under parole. They’d also, for the same reasons as parole, in some states be immediately eligible for Medicaid and SCHIP public benefits, according to the report.
The report authors note that Obama’s first major deferred action executive amnesty, the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) that many Republicans say caused the border crisis, had language excluding recipients of that amnesty from Obamacare.
“Although aliens with deferred action are generally eligible for Obamacare, there is one notable exception,” FAIR wrote. “In 2012, after the creation of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which dramatically expanded the number of individuals receiving deferred action, the Obama Administration decided to exclude DACA beneficiaries from eligibility for Obamacare (as well as state-based Medicaid and SCHIP programs) by issuing a new regulation.”
Even so, the FAIR report authors argue that such an exclusion would be impossible to duplicate in a wider executive amnesty given the regulations and laws on the books.
“The wording of the regulatory exception to Obamacare eligibility is significant,” FAIR wrote. “A new deferred action program, or even expansion of the DACA program, would likely not fall under the exclusion because it will not meet the requirement ‘as described in’ the Secretary of Homeland Security’s June 15, 2012 memorandum. Thus, the new grant of deferred action would make these illegal aliens eligible for all the benefits described above. Additionally, because DACA beneficiaries are barred from enrolling in Obamacare by regulation, not legislation, HHS could revoke the eligibility bar at any time.”
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/11/17/Exclusive-Report-Obama-s-Executive-Amnesty-Will-Put-Illegal-Aliens-On-Welfare-Public-Benefits-Like-Obamacare-and-More
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GOP Strategy to Stop Obama’s Executive Amnesty Emerging
18 Nov 2014 by Matthew Boyle
A clearer picture of the strategy Republicans in both the House and the Senate will use to stop President Barack Obama’s planned executive amnesty in government funding bills is beginning to emerge.
The key point is that no matter what package emerges, there seems to be a consensus emerging among Republicans on Capitol Hill: There will be no funding for Obama’s planned executive amnesty. There’s a number of different ways that can happen.
First, there could be a short-term Continuing Resolution passed that funds all of government from Dec. 11—when current funding measures end—until shortly after the newly-elect Senate GOP majority takes office in early 2015. At that point, the Senate and House Republicans would block Obama’s planned immigration executive order in some fashion—either in a bill that funds all of the rest of government except for that or by splitting various Appropriations bills into different packages that separates funding the Department of Homeland Security out from the rest of government.
Another possibility is that there may be some kind of effort to cut the funding for Obama’s planned executive amnesty in the lame duck session of Congress now, but that effort would likely be thwarted as one of the last acts of outgoing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
“House members are looking for a way to stop executive amnesty while passing a partial omnibus that contains some appropriations bills already passed by the House,” a House GOP aide close to the negotiations told Breitbart News. “The approach would separate the agencies involved in executive amnesty from the rest of the government funding, perhaps through a short-term CR combined with an omnibus, or a ‘cromnibus’ as it’s been coined in recent days.”
In statements to Politico, both incoming Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn and incoming Senate Budget Committee chairman Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) affirmed that is likely to be the pathway forward for Republicans.
“I think there is a growing momentum to the idea that Congress would be acting responsibly and modestly if it funds the government but simply bars the president from executing policies that Congress believes shouldn’t be executed by denying funding,” Sessions, one of the loudest and most aggressive proponents of Congress asserting its authority here, said.
“It seems to me the two options are to do a temporary CR, for everything and to revisit it at all early next year — or to do something longer term on everything other than” the DHS appropriations, Cornyn said. “But I know there will be controversy about that as well.”
One of the best parts of this strategy for Republicans is that they can have their cake and eat it too—have the government funding fight, and have no risk of a government shutdown at all.
As Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) told NewsMax TV this week, the only person talking about a “shutdown” is Obama.
“For whatever reason, the president and his people want to push this idea that somehow a shutdown is on the horizon, that somehow Republicans in Congress want that,” Lee, the incoming chairman of the Senate Steering Committee, said. “That’s absolute nonsense. I think he knows that to be true. I don’t know anyone in either house of Congress that that’s what they want.”
There’s a number of reasons why, unlike the Obamacare defunding battle, this fight won’t likely lead to a government shutdown. First off, unlike Obamacare, executive amnesty is not the law. It’s a lot easier to make a case to block funding to use Congress’ power of the purse to stop an executive amnesty, and Lee said he expects many of the Democrats who have publicly opposed Obama’s planned executive amnesty will join in the effort to stop him.
Secondly, unlike Obamacare, amnesty is not implemented yet—and an effort to block funding would prevent the expenditure of taxpayer dollars being used to carry out a future action; in this case, the printing of executive amnesty documents like work permits, ID cards, and Social Security numbers for illegal aliens.
Thirdly and most importantly, with full control of both chambers of Congress, the GOP can push through appropriations bills or a partial Continuing Resolution that funds everything except for the Department of Homeland Security—separating that out for another fight. They can force Obama to sign those because otherwise he’d have a tough time defending not funding things like Obamacare or the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In the separate DHS Appropriations bill, they can block funding for Obama’s planned executive amnesty—and if Obama won’t sign it, the only part of government that would stop working are government bureaucrats who fall under DHS who are deemed unnecessary. The Secret Service would continue operating, as would the Border Patrol and the TSA, among others.
It will take just a bit of political maneuvering to get into that position, something that’s clearly already under way.
The biggest obstacle to congressional Republicans standing up to Obama’s planned executive amnesty has been Republican leadership in both chambers.
“Speaker John Boehner, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and their top aides and deputies are mulling several options that would give Capitol Hill Republicans the opportunity to vent their frustration with what they view as an unconstitutional power grab by the White House — without jeopardizing the government financing bill,” Politico’s Jake Sherman and Manu Raju wrote late Monday.
One option GOP leaders are considering that the Politico writers described—“offering a separate piece of immigration legislation on the floor aimed at tightening border security and demanding the president enforce existing laws”—is unlikely to fly with Republicans in Congress since it won’t stick. Later in the story, the Politico writers quote Cornyn saying that won’t be acceptable.
“I think it’s got to be money focused because he could refuse to sign anything and everything we send him,” Cornyn said. “I think [a stand-alone bill] is problematic.”
The other options have potential to work out, and it remains to be seen what leadership will do. GOP leaders are likely to need prior buy-in on the strategy from Republicans like Sessions and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), as both have shown propensity to blow up legislative plans by Republicans when they don’t serve the interests of the American people.
Those other options include, according to Sherman and Raju, “promises to renew the effort next year when Republicans have larger numbers in both chambers, and passing two separate funding bills — a short-term bill with tight restrictions on immigration enforcement agencies, and another that would fund the rest of the government until the fall.”
“The leadership has not made any decisions, and is likely to weigh additional options, as well,” Sherman and Raju wrote. “The House does not expect to bounce between options on the floor — they will pick one, and stick with it, sources said.”
The biggest obstacle to stopping Obama has more specifically been House Appropriations Committee chairman Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY). Rogers has been leading the charge for a long-term omnibus funding bill that pays for all of government, including Obama’s amnesty plans, through the end of the 2015 fiscal year which concludes in September. Rogers wants to forfeit Congress’ power of the purse, and until this weekend there was no clear reason as to why.
A Breitbart News investigation published on Sunday gives some indication of Rogers’ motivation: a major campaign contributor of his, defense contractor General Dynamics, is seeking the contract to print the documents required by Obama to implement executive amnesty at a facility in Rogers’ congressional district in Corbin, Kentucky. The facility, which already prints immigration documents like green cards, IDs, and work permits for legal immigrants, would—if the federal government enlists it in the event of an executive amnesty—print the work permits, ID cards, and Social Security cards needed for Obama to grant the executive amnesty. Rogers and his team have not responded to multiple requests for comment for the several days leading up to the publication of the Breitbart News investigation and have not responded to requests for comment since.
Instead of responding to the report, Rogers wrote an op-ed published Monday afternoon for Roll Call in which he laid out his vision for a long-term omnibus—and made not mention of immigration whatsoever within it, despite that being the central theme of this fight.
In the piece, Rogers argues that Congress needs to return to passing individual appropriations bills, but “we have to first clear the decks on the leftover, current-year appropriations work.”
“We are now months behind in completing these annual bills, and the current temporary measure keeping the lights on in our government will expire on Dec. 11,” Rogers wrote.
Rogers’ efforts have fallen apart in recent days as Republicans—including Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman Reince Priebus, Sens. Sessions, Pat Roberts (R-KS), Mike Crapo (R-ID), and many, many more—have stepped up to call for Congress to assert its power to block Obama’s amnesty. Now, Rogers doesn’t even have the full support of members of his own House Appropriations Committee, as a spokesman for committee member Rep. Tom Graves (R-GA) told Breitbart News that his boss is working to develop a strategy to block Obama’s amnesty.
“Congressman Graves is working with House members to craft a plan to keep the government open and shut down the president’s executive amnesty,” John Donnelly, a spokesman for Graves, told Breitbart News.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/11/17/GOP-Strategy-To-Stop-Obama-s-Executive-Amnesty-In-Government-Funding-Bills-Emerging
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Judge: Obama’s Executive Amnesty Would Be “Playing With Constitutional Fire”
Rand Paul: Lawsuit “may be the only recourse”
November 18, 2014 by Steve Watson
Former New Jersey Superior Court Judge Andrew Napolitano has called Obama’s planned Executive amnesty “illegal,” while Senator Rand Paul has stated that a lawsuit may be the only way to stop it.
Appearing on Fox’s “The Kelly File” Monday, Napolitano told host Megyn Kelly that Obama would be “playing with constitutional fire,” if he went ahead with a promise to issue on Executive Order on immigration reform.
“When he suspends deportations and when he imposes his own conditions on those suspensions, he is effectively rewriting the law,” Napolitano said.
“And that violates his oath to enforce and uphold the law as it’s been written. The American people, the Congress and the courts need to know that we have a president who will enforce the law. When he says ‘I will not enforce the law because I don’t like it, or I’m impatient,’ that doesn’t wash under the Constitution.” the libertarian analyst added.
Obama has vowed to address immigration reform before the year end in what is now a ‘lame duck’ session.
The judge added that, while the President has “prosecutorial discretion,” he cannot rewrite the law on a whim.
“He can suspend some prosecutions because he wants to reallocate resources. But he cannot suspend a statute,” Napolitano said. “And if he suspends the prosecutions of 5 million human beings under certain conditions that he made up, he is effectively rewriting the statute and the effect of his exercise of his discretion is the opposite of what the law commands.”
Asked at what point he crosses the line, Napolitano answered “When he grossly abuses his discretion.”
“When the effect of his discretion is to suspend a statute or to have the opposite effect of what the statute commands, that is a gross abuse. He will be playing with constitutional fire if he does this.” the judge added.
Napolitano also recently declared that Obama would be “a candidate for impeachment” should he press ahead with Executive amnesty.
The comments were made following revelations that the Obama administration is overseeing a federal order for 34 million blank work permits and green cards.
Meanwhile, a new report from the Federation of American Immigration Reform (FAIR) exclusively provided to Breitbart News ahead of its public release claims that illegal aliens provided amnesty will have immediate access to welfare and other public benefits.
The report notes that Obama could give the millions of illegals “humanitarian parole,” under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
“Obama’s executive amnesty isn’t only unconstitutional but costly; from day one it opens up federal and state benefits to individuals who are still illegal aliens, regardless of the label the President puts on them,” FAIR executive director Julie Kirchner told Breitbart News.
The report also notes that Obama could issue a decree of “deferred action,” similar to the actions he took under the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which many argue has led to an influx of minors over the Southern border. This too would allow for state benefits and even healthcare for illegals.
Kentucky Senator Rand Paul weighed in on the situation Monday, noting that a lawsuit “may be the only recourse” to overturn an executive order on immigration.
“There’s a famous Supreme Court case, Youngstown Steel, where the Supreme Court actually overturned an executive order and said that the president cannot expressly do something that Congress is telling them not to do.” Paul noted.
“I think with regard to immigration reform he’s doing something that Congress has not instructed him to do, and in fact has instructed him otherwise,” The Senator added. “So, I think the Supreme Court would strike it down, that takes a while, but that may be the only recourse short of a new president” he further stated.
http://www.infowars.com/judge-obamas-executive-amnesty-would-be-playing-with-constitutional-fire/
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Related
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-Texas/2014/11/18/Exclusive-3000-Unaccompanied-Minors-in-Houston-Schools
http://www.infowars.com/texas-rancher-executive-amnesty-rumors-increasing-immigration/
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