WASHINGTON – Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., described to WND what looked like a fundamental flaw in the House leadership strategy to fight Obama’s amnesty by separating funding for the Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, from a massive trillion-dollar spending bill Congress was trying to pass before a midnight deadline on Thursday to keep the federal government running.
Obama might be able to simply ignore an effort to defund the DHS and still keep the department running, according to Brooks.
And, as with his amnesty, he could do it with a simple decree.
The GOP leadership strategy called for funding the entire government except DHS through the rest of the fiscal year with an omnibus bill. A continuing resolution, or CR, would fund DHS only until Feb. 27. (The spending bill is dubbed the CRomnibus because it combines a long-term omnibus with a short-term continuing resolution, or CR.)
The idea would be for the next Congress to then pass a separate bill funding DHS, but with language forbidding it from implementing Obama’s plan to grant amnesty to as many as five million illegal immigrants. If the president would not sign such a bill, as he likely would not, Congress could then withhold all funding for DHS to try force Obama’s hand.
Brooks, however, described a seemingly plausible scenario in which the strategy simply would not work because it might leave the president with the advantage.
“In the last shutdown, 85 percent of their employees were deemed essential. So, the president, arguably could just ignore the Congress in the fight over funding for DHS by keeping it operational by declaring the employees essential.”
That might be a difficult ploy to counter.
“And he’d have a pretty good argument that Homeland Security personnel are essential. In which case, that strategy is not one that satisfactorily confronts the president’s unconstitutional executive amnesty for illegal aliens.”
A better strategy, he believed, would have been for House Republicans to at least try to include language defunding amnesty in the omnibus bill.
“The problem I have with the House leadership strategy, to use a football analogy, is they’re asking us to punt on first down. Without even trying to get a first down or scoring. Maybe the defense will stop us, but you’ll never know if you punt on first down,” Brooks told WND.
Late Thursday evening, the House passed the massive spending bill by 219-206.
The GOP has a 17 vote majority in the House, but as many as 50 of its conservative Republicans reportedly opposed the CRomnibus, primarily because it does not do anything to prevent the DHS from such things as providing five million illegal immigrants work permits, Social Security numbers, tax credits and other federal benefits.
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Brooks implored, “At least try and force the other side’s hand, and if they effectively block our effort to defund executive amnesty, then we pass a second funding bill that prevents a government shutdown that the Democrats would concur with.”
The congressman described the need to defund amnesty in the omnibus bill as more than a symbolic act, because, if nothing else, it would define the battle lines and show voters who stood where.
“We ought to at least force those who favor amnesty and open borders to go on the record,” he said. “If they defeat us, then we come back with a bill that funds the government without the executive amnesty defunding provision in order to avoid a government shutdown.”
Better yet, an omnibus bill that defunded amnesty just might work.
“Who knows? After the shellacking a bunch of Democrats took in November, you might find a number of Democratic senators deciding to vote for it. In which case, it goes to the president’s desk,” mused Brooks.
Brooks co-authored an amendment last week that would defund amnesty, but it didn’t gain traction. He doesn’t claim that strategy is a sure thing, but it would help the GOP stay true to its word.
“Don’t get me wrong, I don’t know how it plays out. But I do think that the House of Representatives should have acted in accord with its rather strong statements in opposition to President Obama’s executive amnesty by passing a funding bill for the remainder of this fiscal year that defunds all aspects of the executive amnesty and send it over to the Senate. And force the Senate to vote on it.”
Brooks pointed out, not only does the CRomnibus not stop Obama’s planned executive amnesty, it funds the president’s previous amnesties.
That includes the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, that made more than one million illegal immigrants who arrived as children eligible for amnesty.
There is also funding to process more than 70,000 Unaccompanied Alien Children, or UAC, mostly from Central America, who have entered the country in the last year, or so.
Brooks told WND the funding for DACA alone would cost taxpayers as much as $19,000 per child.
According to numbers provided to WND by the office of Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, the CRomnibus would fund these amnesty measures:
- $948 million ($80 million more than the Fiscal Year 2014 enacted level) for the department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, to continue to provide health and education services, including legal services, for UACs when they first arrive in the U.S. This also provides expanded transfer authority to HHS.
- $14 million in new funding to all “State educational agencies within States with at least one county where 50 or more unaccompanied children have been released to sponsors since January 1, 2014, through the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Refugee Resettlement.”
- $1.5 billion to HHS for refugee and entrant assistance, available through Sept. 30, 2017.
- $931.9 million for the State Department for Migration and Refugee Assistance, available until expended (of which not less than $35 million shall be made available to respond to small-scale emergency humanitarian requirements, and $10 million shall be made available for refugees resettling in Israel.)
An aide to King told WND it is likely these UACs and families that arrived during the current border crisis never will be deported and these funds will help guarantee that.
It isn’t just the amnesty strategy and spending with which Brooks takes issue. It is also the massive spending for the rest of the government.
“I think nothing has been done to get the votes of the financially responsible wing of the Republican Party. I’m talking about those congressmen who understand the threat posed by these out-of-control deficits and now an $18 trillion debt.”
Supporters claim the CRomnibus would adhere to the budget cap of $1.013.6 trillion in 2013 budget act engineered by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. But Brooks told WND the CRomnibus would actually exceed the spending cap by billions, using what sounded like accounting tricks.
“For example, the more than $5 billion being spent on Ebola is not counted toward the total cost of the CRomnibus that is being marketed to the public. They’re saying that is an emergency that does not need to be subject to Ryan-Murray spending limits. And there are other so-called emergencies and disaster relief expenditures that were included in the CRomnibus that total at least $11 billion.”
It’s not just a massive spending bill, it is also just plain massive at 1,600 pages.
Did Brooks think House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, was pulling a page from Rep, Nancy Pelosi’s playbook, and exhorting colleagues to pass the bill to find out what’s in it?
“I wouldn’t go that far. But I can understand how some would make that argument,” wryly replied Brooks.
And then he chuckled.
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